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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

#91

Post by chasil »

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…

This is a good history on the effects and changing forms of treatment.

"The case-fatality rate varied from 20% to 60% and left most survivors with disfiguring scars. The case-fatality rate in infants was even higher, approaching 80% in London and 98% in Berlin during the late 1800s."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/

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

#92

Post by rectang »

yosito wrote: post #72
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.

IIRC, the smallpox vaccine is the one that scars you for life. I bet a lot of people would be afraid of it at first, but a 30% fatality rate is probably high enough to change a lot of antivaxers' minds.

I have a smallpox immunization scar on my upper arm. It's about the size of a quarter and not very ugly. It is trivial compared to the disfigurement that typically came with contracting actual smallpox.

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

#93

Post by paxys »

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.…

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.

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

#94

Post by ziddoap »

mullingitover wrote: post #30
jameslk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you might get a better reception on Infowars Can you elaborate why you added this part to your comment?

The parent comment was a pretty clumsy dog whistle to paranoid folks who believe Gates to be a sinister puppetmaster who is unleashing pandemic disease on the world. The Infowars audience is very receptive to this unfounded notion. Since the commenter is concerned about the popularity of his posts, I proposed a suitable audience that would be more receptive and would provide the desired positive response.

Did you just see the words "Bill Gates" and jump to your own conclusions, then call out the parent poster based on your jumped-to conclusions?

The article is posted on a mainstream site and describes how Bill wants additional funding to research preventative measures against future pandemics. What is the dog whistle? Where is the sinister puppetmaster references? Where does it say Bill Gates is unleashing a pandemic?

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

#95

Post by bitwize »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #82
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…

Tangentially, I've been on an SCP [1] binge lately, and it's interesting to see the cues SCP takes from the real world. Your quote could be taken verbatim from one of their stories. [1] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com

I'm sure a FOIA request will reveal heavily redacted containment procedures for those vials that look straight out of the Foundation, as well :)

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

#96

Post by nickthemagicman »

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…

30ish% fatality rate of small pox.

I think Black Plague was like 60% fatality rate and killed so many people that it's theorized it paved the way for the enlightenment by disrupting entrenched economic stratification.

Covid is essentially the flu compared to a real historical pandemic.

There were not any 'black plague' deniers.

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

#97

Post by Gibbon1 »

dekhn wrote: post #48
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.

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...

At my high school they found a 40 year old bottle of picric acid. Came with the original lab stock in 1960

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

#98

Post by throwaway0a5e »

dekhn wrote: post #48
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.

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.

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

#99

Post by max-ibel »

yosito wrote: post #72
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.

IIRC, the smallpox vaccine is the one that scars you for life. I bet a lot of people would be afraid of it at first, but a 30% fatality rate is probably high enough to change a lot of antivaxers' minds.

Yeah, but the scar is fairly small and can be in a place that isn't showing. That would be the least of my concerns ...

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

#100

Post by andbberger »

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
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