North Korean defector was immune to anthrax
The New York Post reports that one of the four soldiers who defected from North Korea recently was immunized against anthrax, prompting military officials to speculate that the deadly bacteria has been weaponized by the hermit kingdom’s military;
A South Korean intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity did not say which of the four soldiers who fled the hermit kingdom this year had the antibodies in his system.
The discovery is causing concern in Seoul because the disease can kill at least 80 percent of those who are exposed to the bacterium in 24 hours — unless antibiotics are taken or vaccination is available.
But South Korea’s military has yet to procure an anthrax vaccine.
Defense Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo has said an anthrax “vaccine is expected to be developed by the end of 2019,” but not sooner, UPI reported.
From CNN;
Presidential spokesman Park Soo-hyun said the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought 1,000 doses of anthrax vaccines, to be given to biochemical counterterrorism agents or civilians in the case of anthrax exposure. The vaccines arrived in November.
Park said the Blue House had bought 350 doses of anthrax vaccine to counter accidental exposure, but he said it was ordered by the previous government led by former President Park Geun-hye after an incident in 2015.
Then, it emerged the US military erroneously shipped live anthrax used for research purposes to South Korea, as well as parts of the US, Canada and Australia. The sample sent to South Korea was destroyed and the facility decontaminated.
There were no plans to vaccinate the general public, the Blue House spokesman said.
Category: North Korea
Great, now they can have all the lovely side effects that we all got after taking 5 of the 6 series of shots, they they came back and said to stop giving it to us (Reservists) because people were having reactions to the series of vaccines. I got tinnitus.
I remember that fiasco. I pcs’d in the middle of that sequence and was worried about having to start over. They were threatening AR 15 for people avoiding it and then it was suddenly “never mind” .
What time frame was that? I got through three of the six in 2009/2010…
It would have been about 99. It was 3 shots about 2 months apart and the next 3 about 6 months apart. I had 5 of the 6. Was sick as a dog after one of them. Some retired general got rich is my bet.
I had the experimental vaccines in the Gulf War. We stood in formation and they watched each of us take the pills? Or was it a shot(s)? I didn’t remember until my platoon mates told me we all took them.
Probably part of the damage they caused – CRS (Can’t Remember Shit).
I received all six shots between 2007 – 2008. I do not recall any ill effects, and I think I already had tinnitus (13B). Nobody told me anything about “oh never mind” either. I guess anthrax concerns went the way of CLS (initiating a saline lock) skills.
? I have tinnitis too, but it wasn’t from any vaccine, it was from NOISE!! Boiler room noise and aircraft noise from the flight line!!
“But South Korea’s military has yet to procure an anthrax vaccine.
Defense Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo has said an anthrax “vaccine is expected to be developed by the end of 2019,” but not sooner, UPI reported”
Unless I missed something, Anthrax vaccine has been widely produced since the 1960’s ( the dead strain anyway)…why is it so difficult to purchase from a friendly Nation?
Maybe the South said that for the consumption of their cousins to the north?
Translation: 1,000 doses for the people that matter. Everyone else can piss off.
Kinda how I read that as well. Wonder what the pecking order is.
Cross my palm! That’s the pecking order!
Can someone explain to me how having anthrax anitbodies means he received a vaccine and how that equals the NORKs having weaponized anthrax? This reads like useless propaganda or fake news.
It doesn’t mean that the Norks have weaponized it, for sure. The way I read it was that it is a distinct possibility.
See my response to this news below. The link I provided tells you about the disease itself and how it’s picked up. I doubt that it can be “weaponized” in the sense that the superflue in “The Stand” could have been weaponized.
I didn’t mean for you to take it as a completely serious question.
My point was that antibodies just equal exposure to a disease readily found in nature and farm /ranch settings. Antibodies do not have to equal vaccination and therefore weaponization speculation is a complete farce. Hence fake news.
I was in the military and have chicken pox antibodies, according to the logic employed above, I must have been vaccinated against chicken pox by the government because they are weaponizing chicken pox.
OH, I wasn’t sure if you were serious or not!
No, you got the chicken pox vax to keep YOU from getting it from someone else like some kid at the local Walmar who is carrying it, and whose mommy is in the anti-vaccinate population, which means YOU could get it from that kid.
Which emphasizes my point. I never got vaccinated for chicken pox, I got antibodies the old fashioned way. Exposure. Vaccination is controlled exposure. Antibodies DO NOT equal a history of vaccination. You can run an antibody titer on my blood and all it will tell you is that I have been exposed, not HOW I was exposed.
This dude prolly just grew up on a sheep farm.
They have live sheep in North Korea???? Holy cow!!
Yes. But unlike Dirkadirkastan, the sheep are not violated or pimped out.
But now you’re susceptible to Shingles!!!! Better get your shot for that!
OH NO IT’S HERPES ZOSTER! LIVE IN PERPETUAL FEAR!
Try Gruinard Island off Scotland… they infected it in 1942 and until an aggressive decontamination was carried out in the ’90s, it was still uninhabitable. That may not be ‘weaponized’ but it sure seemed to work pretty well, 75 years ago.
Anthrax spores are absurdly durable and persistent, and very, very hard to kill in the wild. (Not exactly easy to kill under controlled circumstances, either.)
Most of the time, you only have to worry about cows or sheep carrying the anthrax organism, but they get it from grazing on ground that contains the dormant spores.
I have no idea why anyone would think this is a useful “weapon”, unless the Norkish government (meaning Fatty Kim da T’ird) thinks it is usable that way. It does not spread from person to person. You have to inhale it or pick it up through a break in your skin.
This is from The Cattle Site:
http://www.thecattlesite.com/diseaseinfo/197/anthrax/
Anthrax, a highly infectious and fatal disease of mammals and humans, is caused by a relatively large spore-forming rectangular shaped bacterium called Bacillus anthracis.
Anthrax occurs on all the continents, causes acute mortality in ruminants and is a zoonosis. The bacteria produce extremely potent toxins which are responsible for the ill effects, causing a high mortality rate. While most mammals are susceptible, anthrax is typically a disease of ruminants and humans.
It does not typically spread from animal to animal nor from person to person. The bacteria produce spores on contact with oxygen.
So, whatever Rocketman thinks he was doing… okay, sure. He really is an idiot.
The spores are absurdly persistent in nature, and difficult to disinfect.
That’s true. They can stay dormant for more than a century and only activate when rain soaks the soil they’re sitting in. It’s a very hardy organism.
The defector may have been exposed by livestock the good old fashioned way, he may have been vaccinated, or he may have been an unwilling participant in some research.
It doesn’t really matter. This isn’t fake news, it’s just not news. We have known or suspected that the dPRK was producing a variety of biological weapons, to include anthrax, for years. No one should be surprised by this: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-biological-weapons-belfer-centre-pyongyang-nuclear-kim-jong-un-smallpox-plague-nerve-gas-a8015931.html
This isn’t naturally occurring anthrax- this stuff has been weaponized by refining into a talcum like powder that is easily inhaled. It is cheap and easy to make, forces the adversary to invest in expensive gear and training, degrades his ability to operate, and scares the crap out of everyone- especially civilians. It is essentially a mass terror weapon.
That said, it is not terribly effective. The fact that it is such a fine powder makes it hard to get an effective dose in a specific area- it literally blows away before it does any harm- and it is not contagious per se. So, most likely you would see small pockets of infected people than a country wide outbreak.
My guess is that the ROK has vaccinated those that are very likely to come in contact with it- CBRNE teams, etc, and are planning to treat those exposed once it happens.
Wait, I got like 3 of the Anthrax vaccines in 2004, does that mean we have been weaponizing Anthrax too?
Also did the defector get all 6 of his shots? If not he has to start all over again. 😉
BTW we had one guy in our battery who developed such serious symptoms as a reaction to the vaccine that he ended up being medically retired.
Old news. We’ve known (or suspected) they had anthrax in their arsenal for years. It’s well within their capabilities. Only people that didn’t apparently know this was the media.
Were I in SK, I’d be more worried about Kim’s abilities to drop artillery shells of VX on Seoul.
FBI seizes massive Anthrax stockpile:
Hahaha! Ya got me!
I’m not worried. Since N Korea uses coal burning rockets, any bio-agents will be neutralized by the coal or the cast iron rockets will be too heavy to launch.
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And then there’s hoof and mouth disease, which is like anthrax, but not the same. One of my neighbor’s kids got it last year or 2015.
Anthrax, along with botulism toxin (yes, botox), was one of the concerns mentioned when the Biological Integrated Detection System (BIDS–NDI, for non-developmental item) was being tested at Dugway, Utah back in ’94. The BIDS capabilities have now been shrunk down to a system that has been incorporated in the NBC Fox scout vehicle (or so I’ve read). I was a maintenance data collector during that testing.