Re: Why were UK so slow to stop the planes from Italy?
Originally Posted by
The Artful Todger
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@ Solasch ---
The Blog from Cummings is undeniably very true in almost every way other than he underplays the extent of scope for human error and based only on my experience as an undergrad the physical security of hazardous materials is even more lax than he describes. It certainly was in the nucleonics lab at university where we even handled less active sources with bare hands!
(50 years ago)
Do you remember the release of variola virus in 1978 (I think) from a lab in the UK? It sticks in my mind because the lab that I was to visit in Braunschweig requested that I had an immunisation before coming over! I recall the green certificate of vaccination that I was given.
So I'm 100% supportive of his observations regarding pathogens but nowhere did I see any indication that a cull of wrinkles or window lickers would be a price worth paying to create herd immunity - if such a thing is even possible with this bug.
3H-thymidine tracing? Yeah, drops spilled on the floor were common. But I have a healthy respect for anything radioactive.
1978 being the first year I visited england, we were asked whether we had smallpox vaccination. Our shoulders easily proved that. But vaccination in our little bible belt being controversial created small outbreaks in those days, so I can quite understand the reservations of the collegium.
Herd immunity is something that is acquired even if the mortality rate is 90%, like dutch elm disease. It is achieved by letting a disease run its course, either with measures to slow down that course (like now with corona) or without. Cummings is intelligent enough to not say he wants to create herd immunity, but abrupt enough to state what downing str 10 is now denying.
If number 10 denies anything you know it to be true!