[ExI] virus scenario

[spike at rainier66.com]

Subject: Re: [ExI] virus scenario

robot at ultimax.com wrote:

> Not that I think anybody will respond, because there never is, but:

Your posts are filled with content.  It takes a while to think through and
offer a response that makes sense.


>...  But I have followed gene engineering for decades.  I can state
from such personal knowledge that making this virus in a lab is beyond
the state of the art.  Not really far beyond the state of the art but
it is at least 5 years out and more likely ten years.  The showstopper
would be designing the entry protein...

...


This is not my area of expertise, but I have been thinking: we assume (I do)
that this virus was not created in the lab, but rather that it somehow
evolved there and infected a human there.  Or it somehow evolved in a bat
and a lab worker sold the bat at the local wet market.  I have no idea on
that pangolin business.  Or something happened, some clueless goofball with
no harmful intent was poking around with genetic material, but I have little
doubt that one of those scenarios is plausible.

In any case, the virus exists now, and viruses can be preserved in dry form
somehow (they can, ja? (help me out here if you know.))  Regardless of how
the virus came about, a hell of a potential bio-weapon has now presented
itself, and every country in the world has access to it.  Every country has
the option now to isolate the virus and release it aboard an international
flight or cruise liner on the last day of the voyage, causing global chaos
once more.  We have no vaccine and no guarantee we will ever have one: we
still don't have an HIV vaccine, ja?

All along our survivalists envisioned nuclear war, but this looks like a
more likely scenario.  The buildings and farms don't get wrecked in this
one, so our civilization would at least leave behind a beautiful corpse.

We are glad you are here Mr. Kennedy: we can sure use a biology guru among
us right now.

spike