The universal vaccine link is just about a universal flu vaccine—I can’t imagine that a universal vaccine against all possible bio-attacks is feasible.
Have a scenario—a government prepares a bioweapon, and includes the vaccine against it in the usual mix of vaccines, then releases the bioweapon. I bet no one is checking on the possibility of extra vaccines.
What I’m taking away is that a big (a least a billion people dead) bioweapon attack isn’t a near future threat. Biology is just too hard. People would need a drastically better understanding of biology to engineer an effective threat—and it wouldn’t just take better computation, I’m betting it would take new mathematics.
Governments are a bigger threat than terrorist groups, but aren’t they always?
Your scenario may happen, but as many parents refuses vaccination of children, it would show up.
The idea of the map is exactly opposite: to kill half of humanity one need 5 changes in only 2 genes in the bird flu and it is very simple technically. The only thing on which we may try to hope is morality of scientists.
“Of the 573 people that have caught the bug so far worldwide, 336 have died. However, the germ’s inability to spread easily from person to person means the predicted pandemic has never materialised.
Now, scientists at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam have created a H5N1 bird flu that spreads as easily as winter flu.
In experiments on ferrets – whose flu symptoms are most like humans’ – just five mutations in two key genes turned the ‘normal’ bird flu into a highly contagious, super-spreader.”
The universal vaccine link is just about a universal flu vaccine—I can’t imagine that a universal vaccine against all possible bio-attacks is feasible.
Have a scenario—a government prepares a bioweapon, and includes the vaccine against it in the usual mix of vaccines, then releases the bioweapon. I bet no one is checking on the possibility of extra vaccines.
What I’m taking away is that a big (a least a billion people dead) bioweapon attack isn’t a near future threat. Biology is just too hard. People would need a drastically better understanding of biology to engineer an effective threat—and it wouldn’t just take better computation, I’m betting it would take new mathematics.
Governments are a bigger threat than terrorist groups, but aren’t they always?
One of example of against-all viruses approach is Draco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO_(antiviral) I read about universal vaccines before but all search result spoiled by universal flu vaccines.
Your scenario may happen, but as many parents refuses vaccination of children, it would show up.
The idea of the map is exactly opposite: to kill half of humanity one need 5 changes in only 2 genes in the bird flu and it is very simple technically. The only thing on which we may try to hope is morality of scientists.
“Of the 573 people that have caught the bug so far worldwide, 336 have died. However, the germ’s inability to spread easily from person to person means the predicted pandemic has never materialised. Now, scientists at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam have created a H5N1 bird flu that spreads as easily as winter flu. In experiments on ferrets – whose flu symptoms are most like humans’ – just five mutations in two key genes turned the ‘normal’ bird flu into a highly contagious, super-spreader.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2077232/Scientist-deliberately-created-Armageddon-bird-flu-virus-lab-says-publish-details.html#ixzz41OaI2YKD