Got Anthrax?
David sends us a link to Military.com which reports that the feckless boobs at the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah sent samples of live anthrax to 194 labs in all 50 states (and the ancillary protectorates and the District of Columbia);
The number of countries that received live anthrax went up from seven to nine — Japan, United Kingdom, Korea, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, according to the Pentagon’s updated accounting of the shipments through Sept. 1.
There have been no deaths or serious illnesses reported from the military’s 10-year program to ship anthrax to private and military labs for testing to develop vaccines and detection devices, according to the Defense Department.
However, at least 31 military and civilian personnel were treated with antibiotics as a precaution after a lab in Maryland discovered in May that a supposedly irradiated anthrax sample contained live spores.
Initially, when the problem was discovered in May, the Defense Department had said that it only affected 24 labs, 11 states and two countries and that was determined to be optimistic.
You know, government has always been incompetent but in the last few years, they’ve taken that description to new highs, or lows. When our PII gets stolen by hackers, we’re told that it only affects a few of us, until we find out that it affects all of us. Across several agencies. Now this. We’re quickly becoming a third-world nation because we put our trust in a government that isn’t very trustworthy.
Category: Big Pentagon
Well at least it wasn’t Ebola, so we got *THAT* going for us, which is nice.
🙄
This must have been an order from obozo, this is the disease he wants to kill off Americans with?
Have done all of the shots and annoying boosters.
Should be good here.
Anyone have a cage and some birdfeed?
I know that I have gotten so many shots that my kids should be immune.
Color me unsurprised at any of this….incompetence and lazy execution of one’s job duties seems to be the new de facto standard.
I’m just sitting here waiting for the IRS to admit the depth of their failure to protect our information from foreign hackers.
When your personal information gets taken from the IRS, guess what happens to your tax returns? Other people get them, and then you have to prove you are really you and wait a year for the IRS to get their shit together and figure out how they hosed your information….
I suspect that there are millions of people about to find out how bad this loss of data is to their personal security.
They wanted to distribute anthrax? Well, why didn’t they just up to the Dakotas and find some spongy, wet mud up there? Anthrax lies dormant in the soil unless it rains too much. Then the livestock stir up the ground with their hooves and the spores soften up and the cows snort the anthrax spores. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?
Why is there no surprise in this? Something like it was reported in the news a few weeks ago. I think that one was the CDC at work. Is this a new episode of imbecilic idiocy compounded by sheer stupidity? Or is it just the same-same?
Why not send out samples of live smallpox virus, too? The kids aren’t being vaccinated by their imbecile parents, so whooping cough, mumps, diphtheria and measles will be everywhere this fall. Probably tyhpoid, too.
Screw the flu shot. I’d better find out if I can get all of that updated at the VA.
Nobody gets the smallpox vaccine because the virus is suppose to be extinct in the wild.
Yes… so I’ve heard.
But you see, the CDC has told me, in response to my inquiry about so-called lifetime immunity, that immunity from the vaccination last 3 to 5 years and then drops off.
So if some nefarious cretin gets his paws on the virus, the world is effing screwed. Best of luck to you.
Aww, rats! I think I had heard that about lifetime immunity being not so much.
And a kid in the neighborhood, whose sister goes to school with my kids, has the skin variant of anthrax, so I may have been exposed.
Immunity does drop off over time but there is residual immunity. When they started up the vaccinations for military again, us old fats with scars on our arms recovered much quicker than the youngsters. And we let them know it.
So, you’re disputing what the CDC told me in direct response to my inquiry?
Well, trying not to freak out but trying to cover my bases I called my doctor’s office. Doctor’s office said (yikes!) that I should call the CDC. In the same phone call I described the children’s symptoms as I was told them being sores in mouth and on skin; my doctor’s office talked it over for a minute and said that type isn’t very contagious as the children were being treated. I guess I’m okay.
Smallpox and Anthrax vaccines are given to members of the military (I think). They are definitely given to contractors. Out of the 6 Anthrax series of shots, I stuck around to get 4 of them. So I’ve got that going for me.
We keep playing with these bugs, we better not act shocked when they turn around and start playing with us in return.
I’m sure Stephen King would be the first to tell you that when he wrote ‘The Stand,’ he never intended for it to be a history book.
And guess who is working on developing a super, all-spectrum flu shot?
Not me! I saw that BBC TV show. 99% dieoff in the first round (human), then it mutates and hits birds and humans.
Think it can’t happen? Hah! We really do have to stop thinking we’re in control of anything. Mom Nature is closely watching our sheer stupidity.
Gosh, gee whillikers, I used to work there, and I and my wife lived in the military housing area.
I was a patrolman for the Department of Defense Police, and later, a firefighter in the Base Engineering Facilities (or whatever it was called).
My patrols would take me to the anthrax contaminated area, where I was not permitted to venture any farther.
But, the contaminated area was very historic, for the old Lincoln Highway runs right through it.
Once, when my partner was driving, we drove into an area contaminated with GB nerve gas.
I saw the warning signs, and let him know we needed to turn around and get out of that area.
There was a top secret germ warfare lab, and when on a patrol, if we found it unlocked, we were NOT, under any circumstances, to enter that building.
And, yes, I found it unlocked, and no, I did not enter it.
Dugway is the only place I’ve worked where we were given specific orders to “shoot to kill” any trespassers.
If there were time, I could tell you quite a few interesting stories about Dugway Proving Ground.
It was really a neat place to work, especially if you enjoy old Western lore.
They say that living at Dugway is Heaven for men and dogs, but Hell for women and horses.
I still have my t-shirt, if my wife hasn’t thrown it out, with the Pony Express rider I got during a TDY for BIDS (Biological Integrated Detection System) testing back in the ’90s.
I’m guessing that was the building that we rode by going down range past Ditto (I think) with the signs posted that said “use of deadly force authorized.”
And the live stuff that the detectors were tested with was just a common bacteria, not anthrax!
I served as civilian Director of Community Activities at DPG from 89’96’ and have to question John’s claim of shoot to kill guidance. It is also my understanding the Anthrax was not “cooked” sufficiently to make it harmless. Don’t know if it were human or mechanical error. Regardless, memo to the Post Commander, put your papers in and get a consulting job. Dugway is a secure installation about the size of Rhode Island but an intruder could gain access on foot if they were willing to travel across miles of desert. The Ditto Test Area were chemicals are handled is ten miles from main post with an access gate. There were a few military there after the Ranger Desert Phase move away (our daughter married the garrison company commander in 97′)and most of the civilians knew their stuff. Problem is the Mormon influence on taking action against those few civilians who were screw-ups. If human error was involved in this case and those involved are in good standing with the Bishop, they will be protected. As for the civilian guard force, some were okay most were Keystone Cops. Mike, the chief was a squared away retired Army NCO. I went to Dugway for my GS-13, most take jobs there out of desperation. I once had to adjudicate a disciplinary action against a Native American guard. He talked some women into sitting on a mound in the desert with her tits exposed to the wind while he “chanted”. I gave him a pass for creativity but the others on the board upheld the action. That was probably the only initiative I witnessed by a security guard in 5 1/2 years there. Isolated but a great place and BTW, our daughter’s horses loved it and my wife enjoyed that tour.
Wish the F this thing had an edit feature. Please forgive my typo’s, maybe Jon will go in and fix them.
Wish this page had an edit feature. Forgive my typo’s, got in a hurry.
I was there ten years before you, and after I left, a lot of things changed, especially the police.
So, how it is today, I couldn’t say.
@ CLUB MANAGER:
Were you there when they moved the nerve gas from Dugway to Tooele to be destroyed?
I’d already left to go to Brigham Young University.
Anyway, that transfer was a big production, with lots of weapons and lots of news media.
I was there in the fall of 1994, and all I can say is that that’s how I remember the sign reading on the building with all the chain link and razor wire around it.
Does anyone remember the 1972 movie, “RAGE”, starring George C. Scott?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069158/
And yeah, sending out live virus for years means you weren’t following proper procedure or your procedures weren’t proper. How did the “triangle of death go: “Bad acts, bad habits, bad ?”
So they were as careful with that stuff as Hitlery was with Classified USG material. Gee whiz, that makes me feel safe!
Few years ago I got a massive infection after surgery. My doc gave me enough samples and prescriptions for CIPROFLOXACIN.EVERY HOUSE SHOULD HAVE A THREE MONTH SUPPLY PER PERSON. We keep ours in our emergency medical bag along with in the field medical kits that contains everything from splints to stitch a wound. Everything is sold online, including meds for pain, numbing meds to yank a tooth. SCARED? NO PREPARED JUST IN CASE.