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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

#271

Post by throwaway0a5e »

duskwuff wrote: post #174
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to do a little more than touch ether to set it off.

Ethers can form highly reactive (i.e. explosive) organic peroxides when exposed to oxygen, especially over a long period -- for example, when a half-empty bottle is left on a shelf for a few years. https://www.uaf.edu/safety/industrial-hygiene/laboratory-saf...

>Ethers can form highly reactive (i.e. explosive) organic peroxides when exposed to oxygen, especially over a long period -- for example, when a half-empty bottle is left on a shelf for a few years.

Yeah that's the point. That's why they sell it in cans at Walmart. As long as you're already expecting to handle flammables it's not really a big deal. It's only about twice (in my observation having dicked around with both) as spicy as gasoline.

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

#272

Post by icedchai »

bawolff wrote: post #259
paxys wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know what smallpox is, how it spreads, how to slow it down/prevent it, and most importantly we will have a vaccine for it in every pharmacy well before it breaks out the way covid did. The two are not at all comparable.

Also have you ever seen a picture of someone with smallpox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Child_with_Smallpox_Bangl... If that doesn't convince the vaccine hesitant, i dont know what will.

You might be surprised. You post that somewhere else, and 50% of the responses will say its fake news and photoshopped.

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

#273

Post by spiderice »

mulmen wrote: post #200
ajvs wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what kind of privileged insight could Gates have when he's just a billionaire with no expertise and special clearance in this domain? Or is this such a high likelihood scenario that it's the first thing any billionaire would come up with?

Well he isn't "just a billionaire with no expertise or special clearance in this domain". He has spent more time working on vaccine distribution and disease eradication than he spent as CEO of Microsoft. He founded and leads an organization that operates in this domain. He's literally one of the leading global experts in this domain.

I don't understand why more people don't realize this. I feel like a lot of people would consider a biology major who hasn't been in school for 20 years more of an expert on this sort of thing than Bill Gates, all because the student has a piece of paper saying they took like 12 classes loosely related to the subject.

It's like the people who argue that "Elon Musk is a rocket engineer in title only" because he went to school in physics rather than engineering. Like, you don't think being the CEO and lead engineer of SpaceX for almost 20 years is a better education than a 4 - 8 year degree?

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

#274

Post by COGlory »

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?

Any decent lab at an R1 university, or any bright and well motivated individual.

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

#275

Post by COGlory »

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.

If you had the sequence, and cowpox, you could get mammalian cells to make.

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

#276

Post by icedchai »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #266
DebtDeflation wrote: post #196

>In the event of an outbreak, the C.D.C. said, “there is enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate every person in the United States.” We'd be lucky to get 80% uptake. I can already imagine all of the anti smallpox vaccine propaganda that would spread through FB within a day.

I have zero interest in taking the COVID "vaccines", but I'd take the smallpox vaccine in a heartbeat if it was coming back. They're not remotely the same thing. The former drops to less than 50% effectiveness after six months, the latter eradicated the disease.

So you'd rather have no effectiveness by not getting the vaccine at all?

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

#277

Post by fieryskiff11 »

bawolff wrote: post #252
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was vaccinated. Back then, it was meant to last a lifetime. Not sure that's the case, though.

Its one of the oldest vaccines. We started giving it in the 1800s and it was eradicated in the 70's. If immunity waned, it would have been noticed back when smallpox was still a thing by people getting smallpox.

[dead]

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

#278

Post by COGlory »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #262

Why would it be labelled "smallpox" and not "Variola"? Smallpox is not a virus, it's a condition caused by the Variola viruses. That's like labelling a sample of HIV as "AIDS"

The fact that they had it at all means they weren't following best practices practices.

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

#279

Post by lolinder »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #262

Why would it be labelled "smallpox" and not "Variola"? Smallpox is not a virus, it's a condition caused by the Variola viruses. That's like labelling a sample of HIV as "AIDS"

If I were going to label a vial that held an extremely deadly but extinct-in-the-wild virus, I would label it in such a way that anyone who stumbled upon it would immediately know what they had so that they could take appropriate action. "Variola" just doesn't do that.

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

#280

Post by molbioguy »

Teever wrote: post #238
molbioguy wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial oligonucleotide synthesis companies will check sequences submitted to them against databases of 'dangerous' or regulated sequences. Flagged sequences won't be synthesized. This was designed to prevent someone from ordering parts of a dangererous virus sequence for assembly of the complete virus.

I've assumed as much. I've also wondered if there is some sort ability to order innocuous sequence A from company a, innocuous sequence B from company b and then in the privacy of your own lab do the DNA synthesis equivalent of A xor B to get dangerous sequence C.

I think it would be hard to get all the required fragments without raising red flags. There aren't that many synthesis companies and it would take a lot of fragments. Assuming you could get the fragments, its getting easier to assemble (join) them quickly. A 40000 base pair T7 bacteriophage genome was recently assembled from 52 parts in a single reaction (one tube)!
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