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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

#101

Post by bee_rider »

jayflux wrote: post #64
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.…

> A smallpox pandemic would be orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID Edit: fair enough there’s no vaccinations for smallpox anymore. But countries do still buy stockpiles

Given that widespread vaccination for smallpox stopped in the 70's, I guess responding to a large outbreak would be a big problem. I'd hope we've got lots of smallpox vaccine stockpiled, though.

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

#103

Post by LeoPanthera »

jart wrote: post #59
pram wrote: post #27

Huh, I got a smallpox vaccine when I was in the military in 2006. I assumed it was still a common thing, but I guess it hasn’t been done for civilians since the 70s? Crazy.

"In July 2018, the Food and Drug Administration approved tecovirimat, the first drug approved for treatment of smallpox" even though "the global eradication of smallpox was certified by the World Health Assembly on 8 May 1980" could a doctor please explain in what universe this makes sense?

The one where small vials of smallpox are occasionally found abandoned in lab freezers.

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

#104

Post by jjulius »

jimbob45 wrote: post #63
caseyohara wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29269142 Over in the other thread, we're discussing Kasparov admitting that China definitely covered up evidence from their Wuhan lab regardless of whether or not they were actually responsible for a leak.

Couple of things to clarify here:

- In that article, Kasparov only says that the Trump administration said that, and then he discusses the discourse around that claim in 2020. He does not "[admit] that China definitely covered up evidence from their Wuhan lab" or anything like that. EDIT: I stand corrected on this point.

- Nobody in that thread has actually yet mentioned that COVID claim (at the time of my comment), they're all sticking to what Kasparov's piece is about, which is mob mentality and group think.

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

#105

Post by throwaway0a5e »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #85
btbuildem wrote: post #47

> In the event of an outbreak, the C.D.C. said, “there is enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate every person in the United States.” I wonder whether the CDC has re-evaluated their scenarios and simulations given the politicization of vaccines during this pandemic.

Don't take this as a serious analysis, but I can't help but attribute so much anti-covid vaccine mentality to the fact that Covid is NOT a visible disease, and quite frankly, it's lethality is a dice-roll. Perfectly healthy twenty-somethings can be laid-low while retirees can show no symptoms. The disease has to be taken seriously but its variability skews people's perception of it. Smallpox, on the other hand, is ab…

There's no need to fear the .gov or big pharma when it comes to smallpox because there's no need to trust them in the first place. The smallpox vaccine is old and very well proven.

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

#106

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by lostlogin »

mindcrime wrote: post #9
wincy wrote: post #7

If I were working in a lab I’d think it was hilarious to write “smallpox” on random bottles. Probably good that I work in software and not biology.

You could always put a vial labeled "smallpox" in the break-room fridge. But I have a feeling you will end up jobless, if not incarcerated, as a result. YMMV.

Outside of a lab, I seriously doubt anyone would get more than a laugh. Maybe my workplaces aren’t serious enough.

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

#108

Post by dang »

cbxyp wrote: post #102

[flagged]

Can you please not break the site guidelines like this? It's, well, against the site guidelines, and it's also not in your interest. When you post like this, you're hurting your own case, in exchange for the momentary relief of venting/railing against "fools". (I don't mean just you, of course—this is a common problem; most of us have it to some degree.)

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note these two:

"Please don't fulminate."

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

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

#109

Post by jjulius »

Aaronstotle wrote: post #49
caseyohara wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Seems significantly more likely than not this current pandemic originated via a lab leak. Although the comment makes it sound like it was on purpose, rather than an accident which again seems most likely.

Sorta. To your point, it hasn't been proven that it's a lab leak, though evidence has shifted toward that direction. My issue with OP's comment is that he stated it was a lab leak with absolute certainty.

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

#110

Post by rossdavidh »

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…

Depends on the flu, and on how effective that year's flu vaccine is. The 1918-1919 flu had its highest mortality rate in the young adult range, where it was unquestionably higher than covid-19 (although the lack of PCR tests or equivalent back then make it difficult to arrive at precise numbers infected). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Epidemiology_and_p...
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