what if Monkeypox (and/or COVID) were terrorist bioweapons? in Talk Radio
- Aug. 20, 2022, 1:22 a.m.
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- Public
Smallpox vaccines offer as much as 80% of the immunity against monkeypox as it does vs smallpox.
and the US to made millions of smallpox vaccines in the 2000s after 9/11.
Then, the millions of 2000s smallpox doses went unused because the bioweapon never materialized.
Did they even have any evidence terrorists had smallpox??
Was this concern like an Iraqi WMDs situation?
I hate it that we prepared for damn near the same fucking problem 20 years ago when it’s a hypothetical weapon.
We could have decided when smallpox vaxes were about to go bad anyway, why not give them out to anyone who wants it?
If we had distributed 2 million smallpox vaccines then, we’d have way more public immunity now.
But now in the face of a natural outbreak of monkeypox we have a limited supply. And we’re feeding into stigma prioritizing the at-risk homosexuals and/or sluts because we don’t have enough funding for everybody.
Wow.
I hate it.
BTW this is a 20m video but prosebox doesn’t support youtube timestamps. If you click “watch on youtube” it’ll jump right to the most relevant part.
Last updated August 20, 2022
Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 20, 2022 (edited August 20, 2022)
Edited
Smallpox is currently too complicated to be re-engineered in lab I read in book. But Anthrax isn't. And I believe book said the Soviet Union was trying to biohack Smallpox samples to use as a weapon. Book is Deadliest Enemy by Michael Osterholm.
rhizome Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 20, 2022
smallpox is caused by a virus. anthrax is a chemical toxin (produced by bacteria). if you release smallpox, it's gonna travel however it pleases, including probably back to you. if you release anthrax, it's gonna kill just the people you target. i'm not a terrorist, but one of these two things seems intrinsically superior to the other
Sleepy-Eyed John rhizome ⋅ August 20, 2022
Yes. But also unless you're the only one with immunity to a specialized variant.
rhizome Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 20, 2022
that would be... so unfathomably challenging to make? most variants of surface proteins have a high degree of cross-immunity with each other (see: why we're using a smallpox vaccine to prevent monkeypox, a related but ultimately different virus). surely a smallpox vaccine would work even better against a smallpox virus variant??
Sleepy-Eyed John rhizome ⋅ August 20, 2022
I guess. I'm just reporting what I thought I read in book
rhizome Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 20, 2022
yeah, you probably read and understood it correctly! terrorists don't always have good ideas
Sleepy-Eyed John rhizome ⋅ August 20, 2022 (edited August 20, 2022)
Edited
The book also talked about the likelihood of terrorist groups pulling off certain attacks. I think it was that book and the conclusion was it requires far too much technical know-how, equipment, privacy, and massive capital etc for pretty much anyone but state actors to do.
It didn't say Russia succeeded. I believe it said they were experimenting with it. Or they thought they were.
Sleepy-Eyed John rhizome ⋅ August 20, 2022
Like nuclear and biological generally. But I think a former DOW employee was responsible for Anthrax attacks on Washington last decade. I don't know exactly just what I think I recall.
Deleted user Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 20, 2022
You should read The Demon In The Freezer by Richard Preston. I think you would enjoy it.
Sleepy-Eyed John Deleted user ⋅ August 20, 2022
I liked The Hot Zone.
Deleted user Sleepy-Eyed John ⋅ August 20, 2022
So did I, but this book was downright scary.
Sleepy-Eyed John Deleted user ⋅ August 20, 2022
Okay. I'll think about it
rhizome ⋅ August 20, 2022
it's infuriating, innit? i think john oliver is over-optimistic about africans' willingness to accept free vaccines from white people, given that we've historically treated them like lab animals who exist solely for our own research papers, but we could have tried.