Test facilities in 18 countries scramble to destroy 1957 killer âAsian Fluâ virus; U.S. health official says public exposure threat low
WEDNESDAY, April 13 (HealthDay News) â An influenza virus that caused the deaths of more than 1 million people in 1957 was mistakenly sent to thousands of laboratories around the world during the past six months, health officials confirmed Wednesday.
Health organizations moved rapidly to have the killer virus destroyed before any of it could be released. By midday Wednesday, there were reports that at least seven of the 18 countries involved had incinerated the samples sent to their laboratories. And a key distributor in the United States, where a vast majority of the labs are located, said at least 1,000 samples had also been destroyed.
apparently the US company responsbile also sent several samples to TaiwanâŚ
The Taiwanese have reported that the can confirm that âmost of the samples have been destroyedâ⌠Coming from the same pack of gormless scientists who accidentally infected themselves with SARS and almost triggered another outbreak not long ago, that is encouraging newsâŚâmost of the samplesâŚâ of a virus that killed 4 million people the last time there was an outbreak âhave been destroyedâŚâ
Accidentally sending a virus that has killed millions all over the world is pretty damn irresponsbile, but sending it to the Taiwanese, probably the most wrecklessly irresponsible, undertrained, slap dash, research scientists on earth?!.. sheesh⌠:help:
I wonder if they accidentally sent any to North Korea⌠that would be funâŚ
Well, they found and destroyed all the samples outside America. Thatâs great. Idiots for sending them in the first place. :fume:
Complete fluke that they didnât send them to any terrorism friendly states (considering that they were meant to be innocuous influenza test kits), and that they didnât have any accidental infections.
