The strategic countermeasures program began 15 years ago in order to anticipate, assess, prepare, and respond to emerging biological threats. The threat of weaponized smallpox release has been front and center since the Bush administration began understanding how terrorist organizations think and operate. One guy who infects himself and goes on a stroll through an international airport could bring about a million cases in a week. Smallpox already spreads well. If you tweaked it to have the infectivity of chickenpox or measles, that would be an absolute nightmare. That’s what keeps people up at night whose job it is to protect the American people: a guy in an airport with a weaponized pathogen filling the air around him.
I’m not at all surprised to see this get priority review. That just cuts the bureaucratic red tape a bit so that they target a 6 month response to the approval application. Further, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Federal government bought up 500 million doses of this stuff and stockpiled it around the country. Look at what COVID-19 has done to this country with an R0 of 2.5 (April 2020 variant) and an Infection Fatality Rate of 0.65% - 1%. Then imagine what this country would look like with something that has an R0 of 18 and an IFR of 50%. Scary stuff. They take it extremely seriously.
Yes, I am well aware...I have been reading news for 15 years.
I just don’t trust much of what I read in 2021.