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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

#171

Post by HarryHirsch »

bluGill wrote: post #152
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.

I don't think we can grow our smallpox vaccine stockpile that fast. We know how to make them and have the ability, but getting production to scale will take a fair amount of time.

Smallpox vaccine can be grown in people - look at how the original vaccination campaigns got theirs across the ocean before there was refrigeration.

If there was a smallpox outbreak the country the country would go to a sudden stop and everyone would race to be vaccinated, it is that deadly. Unfortunately, Covid is in that uncanny valley where too many people do not care until it hits them personally. That's why we are all fucked.

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

#172

Post by trevyn »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #131
trevyn wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, do you see the fundamental vulnerability in this state of affairs?

That is an interesting question and I am inclined to answer it, but I don't want to assume the meaning behind it. Could you narrow it down a little to make sure I don't misinterpret it?

> When you see something that does not seem belong where it is, you cannot pretend that did not see it.

1) How do you decide if something “belongs where it is”?

2) If a large proportion of a society agreed on a decision function and behaved as you suggest, is there a straightforward way an adversary could take advantage of this situation?

3) Bonus: Is there evidence this is happening today?

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

#173

Post by jjk166 »

kupiakos wrote: post #138
rossdavidh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Comparing modern death rates to the 1919 flu, and to historical smallpox infection, is not useful. Medical technology has come a long way in a century and so average mortality rates have dropped for all diseases. 2019 and 2020 had particularly dangerous flu seasons and were still significantly less deadly than COVID.

The 2020-2021 flu season was the mildest flu season on record. In the US, there were only about 700 influenza deaths in the 20-21 season, compared to 22,000 in the 19-20 season, and 34,000 in the 18-19 season. Similar trends were seen around the world.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/flu-has-disappear...

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

#174

Post by duskwuff »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #98
dekhn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even correctly labelled bottles can be dangerous. THere was an explosion in my lab when somebody touched a bottle of ether. Please don't make it any harder...

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...

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

#175

Post by oasisbob »

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

Smallpox has a genome with approximately 200k base pairs.

I think you're underestimating the difficulty of synthesizing and amplifying a full genome of this size.

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

#176

Post by prox »

chasil wrote: post #34
qwertox wrote: post #23

Apparently this happened before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox > On July 1, 2014, six sealed glass vials of smallpox dated 1954, along with sample vials of other pathogens, were discovered in a cold storage room in an FDA laboratory at the National Institutes of Health location in Bethesda, Maryland. The smallpox vials were subsequently transferred to the custody of the CDC in Atlanta, where virus taken from…

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...

There was an interesting discussion in r/labrats about hoarding old stuff in labs. Can definitely see it happen.

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

#178

Post by dogma1138 »

jart wrote: post #150
joe-collins wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, but the entire ~190K BP sequence is available on the NIH website.

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

#179

Post by gruez »

jart wrote: post #150
joe-collins wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270337
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