3 ms·
Do you really think BSL3 is enough for pandemic flu strains? My only experience was in 1977 at, say, BSL minus 2 or so ^_^ (e.g. mouth pipetted non-pathogenic
by hga 12y ago
Do you really think BSL3 is enough for pandemic flu strains?
My only experience was in 1977 at, say, BSL minus 2 or so ^_^ (e.g. mouth pipetted non-pathogenic E. Coli K-12, something that horrified a friend a decade later), but reviewing the Wikipedia entry the threshold for going from 3 to the rare and expensive 4 is said to be treatablity. It think it's a stretch to say pandemic flu is "treatable"....
- Retric 12y agoIt is treatable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm, but also normal flue treatment is vary helpful. Also, WWI had significant impact on yhe diseases evolution. In peacetime mild strains spread better as overly sick people tend to stay home, but you have little choices in trench warfare. PS: Actual fatality rates are hard to pin down as Aspirin poisoning was a significant issue.
- hga 12y agoAh, I should be more clear, my emphasis in part is on pandemic, as in problems of scale. E.g. forget about extreme efforts like flying a pregnant woman from the U.K. to Sweden because the former was out of beds to provide external oxygenation of the blood. The very basics could become rather hard if enough people are hit at any given point in time. I wasn't aware cytokine storms had moved past the hypothesis stage, but per Wikipedia it sounds like it. Still, treatment of them at scale.... And the other thing is how do you define treatment? Besides Tamiflu and the other neuraminidase inhibitor currently marketed, who's efficacy is very questionable, treatment isn't as I normally define it, it's entirely supportive, including of course zapping secondary bacterial infections. The 1918 pandemic aspirin poisoning hypothesis is interesting, but I think highly speculative, given all the places zapped that had limited if any aspirin availability, or so I assume for all those Pacific islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_pandemic_influenza#Devastated_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_pandemic_influenza#Devast...
- __david__ 12y ago> …but also normal flue treatment is vary helpful. I'm loathe to comment on typos, but in this case do you mean "very" or something about it varying?
- JunkDNA 12y agoYou can read more about it in the supplementary material (which sadly may be pay walled). I'm not qualified to judge. It certainly sounds like adequate safeguards: fully redundant systems, access controls, air locks (or whatever they call them, I'm doing his from memory on the go). It is hard to read the description and come away thinking they were reckless.
- a3n 12y agoThey don't have to be reckless. Something merely has to go wrong.