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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

#141

Post by jonnycomputer »

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 is a certain truth to this. I'm listening to the wonderful History of Byzantium podcast, and an episode is devoted to the plague during Justinian's reign that killed maybe 40% of the population of Constantinople. Whole ships of dead sailors drifted the seas. The description of the disease progression caused by Yersinia pestis is awful. People were throwing themselves off buildings to end their suffering. So higher mortality, and more visible, less ambiguous symptoms (like necrosis, giant lymph nodes, etc.).

Not to discount the seriousness of covid at all. I have a relative in his 40s whose life hangs on a thread right now.

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

#142

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

lostlogin wrote: post #113
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually just got my MBA so I feel extra qualified to answer this statement. When you see something that does not seem belong where it is, you cannot pretend that did not see it. In fact, willful blindness is a thing. There is a reason CYA has become a well known acronym.

Good luck getting that mentality ingrained into society.

Um.. I don't want to sound dismissive, but that mentality is part of society already ( especially if you consider the surveillance US population happily places where they live ).

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

#143

Post by ALittleLight »

andbberger wrote: post #100

Thing is, it's ridiculously to create smallpox just from the sequence. A grad student could do it easily. You order DNA in a few parts (the full sequence is one of few things you can't just order), splice them together, transfect it into a cell line and in about a week you're manufacturing smallpox

Is there anything like how copiers won't copy money to stop mail order DNA places from supplying smallpox (and similar)?

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

#144

Post by jjulius »

jimbob45 wrote: post #124
jjulius wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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),…

>Invaluable months were lost, time the Chinese Communist Party used to destroy data and spread disinformation about the virus’s origins. We may never know the truth, but we do know there was a coverup. Maybe we're just interpreting the above statement in two different ways.

I stand corrected on that point and will edit my post accordingly, but there's still absolutely zero discussion about that point in that thread. You even said, "we're discussing" but you haven't even commented there yourself.

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

#145

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

trhway wrote: post #117
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually just got my MBA so I feel extra qualified to answer this statement. When you see something that does not seem belong where it is, you cannot pretend that did not see it. In fact, willful blindness is a thing. There is a reason CYA has become a well known acronym.

No law enforcement != no action ("pretend that did not see it"). Classic strawman. You definitely got your money worth as your post has all the qualities of an MBA type.

I am assuming good faith. What part of my statement is a strawman?

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

#147

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

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.

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

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

#148

Post by kupiakos »

marcosdumay wrote: post #136
kupiakos wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> COVID is not comparable to the flu. It's 3-20x as deadly Well, there are you, comparing them. If you do the same with smallpox you will get unrecognizable high numbers.

"comparable" was interpreted to mean "similar risk profiles", which is not true.

We don't have a recent smallpox outbreak to compare to for mortality with modern medical treatment. It's possible smallpox is only 5% deadly these days, we just don't know.

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

#149

Post by bastardoperator »

gfodor wrote: post #118
bastardoperator wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is certifably false when it comes to covid and the flu: according to Johns Hopkins University, about 3.1 million people around the world had died of COVID-19 as of April 26, 2021. The flu, meanwhile, kills between 290,000 to 650,000 people every year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

A 5x difference largely skewed towards the elderly and obese fits the definition of “comparable”, but ofc this is assumed to be a downplaying tactic.

It is when you look at the flu data. You think the flu kills more people on average? It doesn't, and most people that die from the flu are also elderly or have pre-existing conditions.

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

#150

Post by jart »

joe-collins wrote: post #129
jart wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Smallpox is still retained in government labs in the US and Russia, and its genetic information is available and could allow for its synthesis from scratch. The fear is that a bad actor could create and/or set it loose as a bioweapon.

Is it on GitHub?
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