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Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

nytimes.com

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Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#221

Post by trhway »

caseyohara wrote: post #40
macinjosh wrote: post #17

Maybe we should shutdown all labs studying pathogens until they can figure out how to handle themselves. We aren’t even through the current scientist caused pandemic yet.

> We aren’t even through the current scientist caused pandemic yet I'm astonished there are people that think like this on HN

>I'm astonished there are people that think like this on HN

you're just probably not aware that Daszak's Wuhan coronavirus gain-of-function program included human testing. It is actually specified in the clear on the EcoAlliance's NIH approved grant for the Wuhan in 2014.

In 2018 he tried to double dip by going to DARPA for money for the human specific virus genetic modifications of the type that later were found present in the COVID-19 which supposedly magically "naturally" appeared right near the Wuhan lab (and thousand kilometers away from its natural brethren) in the late 2019.

I'm astonished that some people on HN still believe in the "naturality" of the COVID-19.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#222

Post by 323 »

koeng wrote: post #211
323 wrote: post #158

The sequence of the smallpox virus is publicly available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/9627521 What sort of labs have the skills to reverse genetics it into a cowpox backbone? Are we talking 2-3 labs in the world, or basically any decent lab? Could a PhD in virology/microbiology do it?

It doesn't take that much. If you're good enough at DNA build from oligos, could probably synthesize it with less than a PhD. It is expensive though, and very unlikely that anyone would actually do it in a way that evades the surveillance systems.

But I think the hard part is not just synthesizing the DNA, but instead assembling the various proteins into an actual virus.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#223

Post by tomjen3 »

caseyohara wrote: post #40
macinjosh wrote: post #17

Maybe we should shutdown all labs studying pathogens until they can figure out how to handle themselves. We aren’t even through the current scientist caused pandemic yet.

> We aren’t even through the current scientist caused pandemic yet I'm astonished there are people that think like this on HN

That Covid is caused by a lab leak?

China is known for making cheap stuff. High quality products with safety in mind? Not so much. Why should their lab procedures be better?

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#224

Post by 323 »

londons_explore wrote: post #213
koeng wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take that much. If you're good enough at DNA build from oligos, could probably synthesize it with less than a PhD. It is expensive though, and very unlikely that anyone would actually do it in a way that evades the surveillance systems.

How much harder is it than the process of building your own bacteria from a DNA sequence...? Would just tacking it into a bacterial DNA sequence and being lucky end up in replication of it? I remember when I looked into it that about $5k of equipment scrounged from ebay and stuff being trashed from labs was probably enough for making your own bacteria.

It's a bit more complicated, like how you can't just take a Mac binary, put it on a Windows computer and expected it to run just because it uses the same x86 machine code.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#225

Post by stolenmerch »

kupiakos wrote: post #66
IAmWorried wrote: post #33

A smallpox pandemic would be orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID. COVID has a very low death rate and is comparable to the flu, whereas Smallpox kills 30% of people it infects and disfigures an even higher percentage. And my understanding is that it is just as contagious (may be wrong on this). Read up on Operation Dark Winter (2001 era wargame of a US smallpox outbreak) for details on how this might play out.…

COVID is not comparable to the flu. It's 3-20x as deadly depending on a variety of factors. Smallpox would still be significantly more deadly than COVID individually, but I'd bet people would take lockdowns much more seriously for smallpox than they did for COVID, preventing a pandemic and resulting in fewer deaths overall. Especially because people believe falsehoods like "COVID is comparable to the flu" because it…

Yes, for the entire population in aggregate. But the flu is deadlier to children than covid. Simplistically and reflexively repeating "covid is not comparable to the flu" obscures this fact to some degree. Not saying you are doing this, but making it verboten to compare the two is a bad practice, in my opinion.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#226

Post by CapitalistCartr »

jweir wrote: post #80
chasil wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than once. "The smallpox virus escaped three times from labs in England in the 1960’s and 1970’s, causing 80 cases and 3 deaths." https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-peop...

Then a good deal of the population was vaccinated. The US stopped vaccinating for small pox in, I think, 1972... just before I was born.

The military was still vaccinating in '81, when I joined.

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#227

Post by [deleted] »

jart wrote: post #168
bluGill wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rarer the disease the easier it is to get approved. Once approved you can tell doctors can use it for anything, and you can tell doctors what else it "might" work for. Doctors can then buy it for those other things, which they might do. You are supposed to study the other things, but that takes time and a lot more money (to be kind) Note, the above is an over simplification, good enough for discussion, but not fo…

That's quite a regulatory hack. Thanks for explaining it to me.

[deleted]

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#228

Post by Teever »

koeng wrote: post #211
323 wrote: post #158

The sequence of the smallpox virus is publicly available: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/9627521 What sort of labs have the skills to reverse genetics it into a cowpox backbone? Are we talking 2-3 labs in the world, or basically any decent lab? Could a PhD in virology/microbiology do it?

It doesn't take that much. If you're good enough at DNA build from oligos, could probably synthesize it with less than a PhD. It is expensive though, and very unlikely that anyone would actually do it in a way that evades the surveillance systems.

Can you tell a layman more about these surveillance systems?

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#229

Post by jart »

Spooky23 wrote: post #204
jart wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biotech companies can create vaccines for new diseases within hours of receiving the source code. Why would pharma pay billions of dollars to get a treatment approved for an old disease zero people have?

Because it is a disease which has been weaponized by the United States, United Kingdom and former Soviet Union at a minimum. Not only do diseases escape containment (there was a weaponized Smallpox outbreak in 1971 in the USSR, and Lyme disease is believed to have originated from Plum Island, 2 miles off of Long Island), but there’s a nonzero probability that you’ll have a planned release someday.

https://youtu.be/ozg7gEchjuM?t=152

Re: Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory

#230

Post by topkai22 »

lazide wrote: post #169
topkai22 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smallpox is roughly as contagious as SARS-Cov2 Delta and therefore more transmossible than the original variant. However those numbers are the unmitigated numbers. Public health and other authority figures have some advantages in fighting smallpox versus SARS-Cov2. IIRC, smallpox is not infectious until the "pox" are visible on the body, greatly improving ability to screen for the disease and the vaccine traditional…

Based on what I’ve been able to find, Delta would have a ‘raw’ (without extensive countermeasures) R0 of 12-13 (original Covid was measured in NYC pre-masking and lockdowns at 6.4). Do you have cites for the other numbers you have? Totally agree on severity (or lack thereof) being why it is spreading and thriving. Also the high asymptomatic spread helps too. You can’t get the consistent, strong response in taking cou…

A December 2020 journal article I was using (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7751056/) gave an r0 range of the original of 1.5-6.68 across various studies. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34369565/ puts Delta at about 5.08 and the origin strain at around 2.79. There is a lot of range in numbers I've seen, but the proportion is generally agreed to be about 2X for Delta to the origin strain. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11742399 has smallpox between 3.5 to 6, so closer to Delta than the origin strain.

I didn't look into these numbers to deeply as they seemed to be under active debate and my point was that smallpox is in the range of Delta, not the specific number.

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