Today’s Outbreak News
on 01/24/2020 at 11:08 AM
I have to wonder, are there scientists somewhere reenacting Outbreak (1995)? Do a few cities in China resemble Containment (2016)? Will we end up with something resembling Contagion (2011)?
As much as I distrust parts of the U.S. Government where it comes to keeping the citizenry informed - I do hope the CDC does a better job than these movies portray!
Jackal, it may be worse than you or those films can imagine. China’s maximum viral research lab is in Wuhan, 20 miles south of the epicenter. The place is brand new, and China’s first and only Level 4 containment facility. This is where they study the most evil germs on the planet.
The SARS outbreak a few years back was caused by the disease somehow getting loose from another research facility of theirs. It escaped several times.
“As the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak escalates, the only lab in China which is equipped to study and deal with such deadly and emerging infectious diseases is located in Wuhan—the city where the virus first appeared.
The lab—the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory (Level 4) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences—works with and studies the world’s most dangerous pathogens such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Ebola. However, scientists had warned in 2017 that a dangerous virus could escape the lab. According to Nature, some scientists outside China were worried about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a “biological dimension to geopolitical tensions” between China and other nations. “
Sounds pretty reassuring, right? Um. NO.
PS - Who knows what they’re cooking up in there. Crossbreeding bat and snake diseases to see what happens. The only real difference between a bio weapons lab and a research facility is one of intent.
When he was alive, my father worked at Plum Island doing bio-hazard work. While the place shifted to disease control in the years before it closed, look up “building 257” for a glimpse at what happened there in earlier years. At least the USA put a place like this on an isolated little island miles out to sea surrounded by rough waters. China put theirs in the middle of their 5th most populous city.
