About that Smallpox? Yeah, it’s viable

Good day all. Last week I wrote a post about a box containing Smallpox virus that had been sitting in a closet for decades. At the time, because of the way the vials were stored, people thought that the virus was dead.

Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case after all. Some of that virus was still viable, which is another word for “It’s ALIVE!” Here are the details from CNN:

At least two of the vials employees at the National Institutes of Health found in an unused storage room earlier this month contain viable samples of the deadly smallpox virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

Can we say “Oops!”

Employees found six forgotten vials when they were preparing to move a lab from the Food and Drug Administration’s Bethesda, Maryland, campus to a different location. The laboratory had been used by the NIH but was transferred to the FDA in 1972. When the scientists found the vials, they immediately put them in a containment lab and on July 1 notified the branch of the government that deals with toxic substances, called the Division of Select Agents and Toxins.

You can go back to my original post on the details about how they found the vials. I do have some doubt about the vials being found by a scientist. I suspect it was actually found by someone helping to pack the storeroom up and who realized what he had found and he called in a scientist, who no doubt went, “Oh SH**!!!” Then the mad scramble to get the virus into a secure facility ASAP began.

On Monday, law enforcement agencies transferred the vials to the CDC’s high-containment facility in Atlanta. The CDC is one of only two official World Health Organization designated repositories for smallpox.

And once the CDC got their mitts on the vials, they tested them. And they found?

CDC Director Tom Frieden said his scientists worked through the night on the samples as soon as they got them. Testing confirmed that there was variola DNA in the vials. Additional test results showed “evidence of growth” in samples from two of the vials, suggesting that the smallpox virus is alive.

I think we have moved beyond “OH SH**!!” and into “Oh Fu**!” They tested two of the six vials and came up “Danger Will Robinson, DANGER!”

The other four vials still need to be tested for evidence of growth, Frieden said Friday.

Anyone want to take a bet that they will find the other four vials also have viable virus in it?

After their investigation is complete, the CDC will destroy the vials and all the growth that came out of them. The World Health Organization will oversee that destruction.

And to that I say “Burn baby BURN!” Put that stuff in the hottest blast furnace you can fine and torch it!

Frieden says that the NIH is currently scouring their buildings to make sure there are no other surprises left in unused storerooms. He says the problem in this case is not in the creation of the vials; the discovery points to a “problem in inventory control.”

“A problem with inventory control? Gee, ya think? Sheesh! I wonder what else they might find? Perhaps a nice zombie virus perhaps?? The CDC has been having a few “issues” of late with their laboratory procedures. I thought it was a recent problem. Apparently not. I wonder if I should look into getting a smallpox vaccine booster shot? (I admit I’m old enough to have been vaccinated when I was a toddler)

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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