Article here.
Oops.
I wonder how many other sites are quickly checking their stores?
Aww, and I here I was hoping to be able to blame antivaxxers.
Now I’m sure I had something like that around…
<rummages in closet, then fridge>
If those vials have been at room temperature all these years it’s highly unlikely they’re still viable. Apparently the CDC is double-checking on that, but I suspect the vials are duds. At least, I hope they are.
Yeah, they’re supposed to be kept in freezers, I gather. The real concern is that a stock of smallpox went unaccounted for for several decades - so perhaps somewhere there’s a freezer with some unlabeled tubes, just waiting for some student intern to be told to clean the thing out.
Well, you know how it is. You lose your car keys, a box of Ebola virus goes missing…no biggie.
Looks like they were lyophilized, in which case there is every reason to believe that they are viable.
I really should clean out the fridge, that H1N1 vial is stuck in ice in the back.
Just to be precise, smallpox vaccination has not been routine in North America for nearly 50 years. My 48 yo daughter was vaccinated once, while her 47 yo brother was not ever.
“Very small pox.”
Here is an article by Cecil regarding smallpox in modern times.
The statement that sticks with me:
…many Americans are as vulnerable to smallpox as Native Americans were at the time of first European contact.
Scary stuff.
Huh, this article says they were in a “cold room”; previous ones that I read stated they were not kept sufficiently temperature-controlled to be likely to be viable, even when freeze-dried.
I once had a temp job filing uranium loss reports for a defense contractor. A milligram here a milligram there…
(I got to wear the radiation exposure badge in that job - they offered to extend my assignment - I didn’t take them up on it).
Hey, it was in a storage room. It can happen. They were probably behind a box of blankets… :smack:
Makes me wonder how many paranoid people are going to spring for that vaccine now.
I’ve always been a bit curious as to how the CDC could be so damn CERTAIN that there were only two places with the virus in the whole world. People aren’t really good at keeping track of things, and as I recall, it was a voluntary turn-in, so it wasn’t like there was someone going around and checking.
They probably aren’t. One of the reasons they keep a stock at CDC, and in Russia.
“We have top men working on it. Top. Men.”
I strongly suspect an outbreak of smallpox would finally convince the most ardent anti-vax nut of the need to vaccinate ASAP. Smallpox is one nasty assed disease.
That has always been a risk and a concern. I’m not sure why anyone would think otherwise, other than not having through about it at all.
They were what? I’m not familiar with that terms.
Essentially freeze drying. They will last a long, long time that way.