Self-deleted by member

[OKDem08]

This message was self-deleted and locked by OKDem08.

[midnight]

1. O boy. And last week Congress was outed for insider trading.

[Skittles]

2. link?

[still_one]

4. It is the "russian times", but I would like to see other sources /nt

[OKDem08]

5. here you go:

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-siga-drug-smallpox-265/

[Skittles]

6. not credible

not at all

[timtom]

8. Whom do you consider credible these days? (nt)

[Skittles]

11. someone besides RT and rightwing nutjob sites

like, this:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/senate-democrat-seeks-investigation-of-obamas-no-bid-contract-for-smallpox-drug/

[still_one]

3. "russian times" = RT? Do you have another source? /nt

[girl gone mad]

10. RT is a credible source, but here you go..

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/senate-democrat-seeks-investigation-of-obamas-no-bid-contract-for-smallpox-drug

[nobodyspecial]

7. Well, if it makes Obama look bad

who needs a credible source.

[cliffordu]

9. Smallpox"????? REALLY??????

How many cases of smallpox were reported last year???

[Saving Hawaii]

12. Smallpox is a weird subject. Then again, RT is a bad joke.

It's been eradicated for years. Only place you'll find it nowadays is in very select American and Russian biological facilities. And who knows what's been done with it while it's been sitting there. Weaponized smallpox certainly isn't what the best and brightest working on nasty biological weapons would've been interested in developing. Of course not. So really... I can see why a subject like this might be conspicuously lacking in details that make sense. Why are they making an experimental vaccine for an eradicated disease that is effectively treated by the existing vaccine? Connecting one and one here? It equals two.

But I really do need a better source for this discussion about smallpox drugs than RT.

[Saving Hawaii]

13. Hmm, here's ABC News and LA Times and Faux

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/senate-democrat-seeks-investigation-of-obamas-no-bid-contract-for-smallpox-drug/
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-smallpox-20111112-m,0,6088814.story
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/12/questions-arise-over-433m-smallpox-drug-contract-to-company-tied-to-donor/

[Skittles]

14. FYI: Fox News is not a credible source

[Saving Hawaii]

16. Faux is more credible than RT

[Skittles]

17. mmmmmmmmmm

dunno about that

[Saving Hawaii]

19. RT really is that bad.

It's worse than Faux. And only slightly better than the Daily Fail.

[Skittles]

20. I fail to see how one could be worse than Fox

as bad as - maybe. But worse? I cannot see it.

[Quantess]

23. FOX is hands down the worst ever.

Worse than Pravda.

[Saving Hawaii]

24. No way.

There are places worse than Faux.

Faux does more damage. It's widely viewed and completely full of BS. But RT is less credible.

[Skittles]

25. less credible than "completely full of BS"

:rofl:

[Warpy]

15. First, smallpox is "only" 30% fatal

Second, it's a viral disease. The virus is a very fragile one unless they've managed to splice it together with a hardier virus to weaponize it, not as easy as it sounds. There is no really effective antiviral out there that I know of, or even in the pipeline, that would do much of anything on an established case of smallpox. The only thing that works is vaccination and vaccination with active cowpox, a much milder disease of herd animals, does confer immunity so a vaccination program could easily be restarted should the need arise.

This story really does smell. Someone didn't do adequate fact checking, IMO, especially the part about Obama micromanaging the White House medical supply list.

[Saving Hawaii]

18. CDC and Vector kept smallpox around for research purposes.

You think nukes are good MAD?

[Warpy]

21. Smallpox isn't that great a weapon

because the kill rate is too low.

The next war will likely start as a cyber war.

We won't win it. Infrastructure and education have both been neglected for far too long to allow us to win it.

[Saving Hawaii]

22. You're missing the history here.

Let's say you're the Soviet Union or the United States in the middle of the Cold War. Nuclear MAD causes a rough stalemate. You can't fire because they fire and you both die.

But Ronnie Raygun is working on his Star Wars missile defenses and christ knows what the Soviets are up to. One of you is probably gonna have a relatively effective missile shield first and at that point MAD doesn't work anymore. You now have a 'gap' to use the terminology I learned in Dr. Strangelove. You could design some insane nuclear bomb that you could detonate in Russia and that would still destroy all human life. Now you have nuclear MAD again. That's what they did in Strangelove.

Or... you could develop a different sort of MAD. One that might be technically easier than a nuclear weapon that could kill life halfway around the world. Perhaps you could tweak an already highly communicable virus (like smallpox) so that its mortality is increased. Instead of being 30%, maybe you push it up to 50% or 90% or even 100%. But more importantly you change it somewhat so that existing vaccines are no longer effective against it. Conveniently, you could also develop an effective vaccine against your nightmare virus so that it doesn't kill you, just that other guy and maybe some of your peasants (they died for their motherland).

Now, even if Ronnie Raygun develops his Star Wars defenses and you don't, you still have MAD even though you can't nuke him anymore. And Ronnie doesn't have access to your engineered smallpox virus so he doesn't have anything that he can develop a vaccine against, so you really don't have to worry about getting 'gapped' again, even though Ronnie might possibly be making his own nasty virus to match yours.

You see the problem here? And why we might need certain new and untested vaccines even though the existing stockpiles should work just fine against a disease that was eradicated decades ago? Cyber warfare might be all the rage now and will probably be the way many wars in the future are fought, but it's not a strategic deterrence. And you have to remember that this virus was possibly getting toyed with back in the '70s and '80s when cyber warfare wasn't as interesting as it is today.