Re:Ask HN: How are you preparing for COVID-19 disruptions?
by dfsegoat on Friday February 28, 2020 @10:02AM
(#22443194)
Not implying anything: But this tracks with my understanding of how USSR and USA wanted to select bacterial/virologic bioweapons [1]:
An agent that killed very quickly e.g. Ebola is actually not a very good bioweapon. You want something with a long incubation period that is infectious before people are symptomatic.
Things that incubate in short order + kill hosts quickly "burn the epidemic out" before it can spread.
Ideally it also can survive outside of a host for some period of time as well.
An agent that killed very quickly e.g. Ebola is actually not a very good bioweapon. You want something with a long incubation period that is infectious before people are symptomatic.
Things that incubate in short order + kill hosts quickly "burn the epidemic out" before it can spread.
Ideally it also can survive outside of a host for some period of time as well.
1 - Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston