Article

2005-10-17 Fifth Column

Vomit-Brained Idiots give Terrorists the Spanish Flu genome

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Posted by Ernest Brown 2005-10-17 09:35|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 If they're planning to reconstruct a virus from a genome template, let's hire them. The US probably won't be able to do that for another 20-50 years without their help.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-10-17 11:17|| 2005-10-17 11:17|| Front Page Top

#2 I would add: Why would they spend the money? The typical terrorist attack is done as cheaply as possible. That allows for more attacks to be planned and funded. Cheap, and simpler attacks also mean fewer points of potential failure. All Tim McVeigh had to worry about was if the timer would work or not. A viral terrorist has multiple points of failure to overcome, not the least of which is not dying by your own product. Chemical attacks and dirty bombs are inexpensive, and plain old explosives even more so.

Posted by Chuck Simmins">Chuck Simmins 2005-10-17 13:48|| http://blog.simmins.org]">[http://blog.simmins.org] 2005-10-17 13:48|| Front Page Top

#3 Mortality from the Spanish flu was 3%. Reason it was so deadly was because it struck half the world population. But nowadays mortality would be a lot less than 3% just from better diagnostic and life support and that before we factor antivirals who didn't exist in 1918.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2005-10-17 14:41|| 2005-10-17 14:41|| Front Page Top

#4 JFM: Not so, on several points. First of all, the demographics are heavily skewed towards peasants with absolutely no modern health care. Perhaps 3-4 billion.

Second, in 1918, the American medical community were very familiar with epidemics. They had good antiseptics, autoclaves, surgical masks and rubber gloves, specialist hospitals for certain diseases, and took many reasonable precautions that saved lives.

The big difference today is that the general public is far more medically educated. It also has access to tremendous information resources, and can receive information quickly from the government.

As far as antivirals go, only one is left that the disease hasn't shown considerable resistance to. The one they had been betting on, Tamiflu, may require 30 times its expected dose to have any effect.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-10-17 15:57|| 2005-10-17 15:57|| Front Page Top

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