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https://www.historyofvaccines.org/conte ... d-vaccines
German physician Richard Pfeiffer (1858-1945), once a student of Robert Koch, had isolated bacteria from the lungs and sputum of influenza patients during the influenza pandemic of 1892.
Johan Hultin, a 25-year-old Swedish microbiologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Iowa, who set out on a mission in 1951, to dig up the frozen corpses of Inuit victims of the 1919 pandemic... so as to retrieve the viruses what killed them!
"Buried and preserved by the permafrost about 7 feet deep was the body of an Inuit woman that Hultin named “Lucy.” Lucy, Hultin would learn, was an obese woman who likely died in her mid-20s due to complications from the 1918 virus. Her lungs were perfectly frozen and preserved in the Alaskan permafrost. Hultin removed them, placed them in preserving fluid, and later shipped them separately to Taubenberger and his fellow researchers, including Dr. Ann Reid, at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Ten days later, Hultin received a call from the scientists to confirm — to perhaps everyone’s collective astonishment — that positive 1918 virus genetic material had indeed been obtained from Lucy’s lung tissue.
With this work of ghoulish grave digging out of the way... the task at hand was to start the reverse genetics process, which was to create plasmids for each of the 1918 virus’ eight gene segments. A task undertaken by renowned microbiologist, Dr. Peter Palese and Dr. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
"On the day the 1918 virus appeared in his cell-culture, Dr. Tumpey knew history had been made, and in fact, a historic virus had been brought back from extinction. He sent a playful, Neil Armstrong-inspired email later that day to colleagues and collaborators, which simply said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
"The fully reconstructed 1918 virus was striking in terms of its ability to quickly replicate, i.e., make copies of itself and spread infection in the lungs of infected mice. For example, four days after infection, the amount of 1918 virus found in the lung tissue of infected mice was 39,000 times higher than that produced by one of the comparison recombinant flu viruses."
One wonders what the follow-up might be to the giant blundering 'leap' into the abyss of madness described above. Well, wonder no longer....
"In 2008, CDC established the International Reagent Resource (IRR), which provides reagents to laboratories around the world to identify seasonal influenza A and B viruses, as well as novel influenza A viruses. During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the IRR distributed a new CDC developed 2009 H1N1 PCR assay to domestic public health laboratories and laboratories around the world less than 2 weeks after the 2009 H1N1 virus was first identified."
So.... for you, in the category of pretty much brain dead... let's carry on...
"The latest work was done by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His team showed that adding the 1918 gene for the surface protein haemagglutinin to modern viruses made them far deadlier to mice. The researchers also found that people born after 1918 have little or no immunity.
The team started the work at the highest level of containment, BSL-4, at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. Then they decided the viruses were safe enough to handle at the next level down, and did the rest of the work across the border in a BSL-3Ag lab in Madison. The main difference between BSL-4 and BSL-3Ag is that precautions to ensure staff do not get infected are less stringent: while BSL-4 involves wearing fully enclosed body suits, those working at BSL-3Ag labs typically have half-suits.
Kawaoka told New Scientist that the decision to move down to BSL-3Ag was taken only after experiments at BSL-4 showed that giving mice the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in advance prevented them getting sick. This means, he says, that if all lab workers take oseltamivir “they cannot become infected”.
"In similar experiments, Terrence Tumpey’s team at the US Department of Agriculture’s poultry research lab in Athens, Georgia, got quite different results: they found that mice given oseltamivir still got sick and 1 in 10 died. It is not clear why Kawaoka’s mice fared better.
What is more, all the safety precautions are aimed at preventing escape, not dealing with it should it occur. If any of Kawaoka’s lab workers are exposed to the virus despite all the precautions, and become infected despite taking oseltamivir, the consequences could be disastrous."
Now the screams from the body bags of crematoriums are flowing in.
