Brandon9000 wrote:parados wrote:Brandon9000 wrote: AIDS. However, I don't have to provide a particular example just because you say I do. 25 million people died in the influenza pandemic of 1918. Your childlike faith that someone infected with a disease designed to kill as many people as possible could be harmlessly quaranteened with reliability is absurd. It's "famous last words."
1 million people have NOT died of Aids in modern western countries. The influenza of 1918 was NOT post WW2 which is really the advent of modern medicine. You have to provide evidence because YOU SAY you do. Let me quote YOU on why you have to provide evidence.
Quote:Every poster has the responsibility to back up claims he makes here or else not make them.
Quote:It is one of the most fundamental rules of debate, that when a debater makes claims of fact, not opinion, he must be prepared to provide some citation to show that he did not simply make them up or exaggerate.
That's why I provided evidence when you asked, because it is a fundamental rule of debate. The fact that you don't like my evidence is not the same as me refusing to offer any.
parados wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:That's why I provided evidence when you asked, because it is a fundamental rule of debate. The fact that you don't like my evidence is not the same as me refusing to offer any.
I don't see any evidence you provided. Where is your citation? Where is your link to a credible source?
Upon your request, I provided examples. My examples were well known public domain information. Unless you are denying that an influenza epidemic killed 25 million people in 1918, or AIDS millions today, I'm done. Tell me why you would ask for a source for public domain information that you are totally aware is true?
parados wrote:Brandon, you have stated..
Quote: the consequences if the danger is real - if even one WMD had ever been used in a populated area, the consequence could be as high as perhaps a million dead.
I asked you to support this with some evidence... Note you use the phrase "one WMD". You have not provided even one source to back this up claim of yours.
Brandon, you have also written.
Quote:Anyone can claim any expertise; anyone can lie; anyone can exxagerate. That is why, as everyone knows, each debater who claims facts is required to support them on demand or withdraw them.
and....
Quote:It is one of the most fundamental rules of debate, that when a debater makes claims of fact, not opinion, he must be prepared to provide some citation to show that he did not simply make them up or exaggerate
So, where is your citation to back up your claim of one WMD could kill millions? You can retract the statement if you wish. It doesn't matter much to me
but your statement is not factual and as such was not a reason to invade Iraq.
What? If one single WMD could kill a quarter million people, then we needn't have been concerned? Ha ha. My point would have been just as valid with 1 WMD = 1 quarter million deaths, but I will stick with a million. First of all, I definitely feel that a plague could kill a million. 25 million were killed by the 1918 influenza outbreak. All of your logic denying this is based on the idea of it being contained, and that is so optimistic as to sound like "famous last words." More on that below. As for nukes, the primary statistic we have to judge by is Hiroshima. The nuke was 15-20 kt, 140,000 people died by the end of the year, and not so many died in the years after that. The most powerful bomb ever made (by the US) was 15,000 kt. India tested a 43 kt bomb in 1998, and claims a 200 kt bomb. I will lay out a scenario I consider plausible. Hussein is left in power, and eventually re-starts his WMD programs. He produces a 43 kt bomb like the Indians did in 1998 and makes a few. Now, by my own prior statement, we are limited to considering only one bomb used. So be it. A 43 kt bomb is smuggled into Los Angeles in pieces and detonated. Now, if a 15-20 kt bomb kills 140,000, then surely a larger bomb will kill more people. I will take the conservative course and reduce my estimate to 400,000 dead with this bomb, including the aftermath. Although nuclear bombs have absolutely been made that would kill a million, I will grant that it is unlikely Iraq would have produced one of them in the near term. So, my statement becomes a million or more with a plague, or 400,000 with a single nuke, although I will mention in passing that if two or three nukes were detonated, a million would still be obtainable.
parados wrote:You have also said ...
Quote:The only valid way of assessing the correctness or incorrectness of the invasion of Iraq is to ask what the conditions were at the time the invasion occurred.
Since the "
only valid way of assessing the correctness" is what was known at the time, your flights of fancy as to what Saddam might have been able to do in the future would be irrelevant according to the standard you laid out.
This is not a valid conclusion. To clarify this, my statement was that any action, the invasion for instance, can only be judged according to what was known at the time the action was taken, not what was learned later. This applies to the degree of justification for the invasion based on the probability that Hussein had retained WMD and/or development programs. This does not however, in any way affect or interact with the idea that if Hussein were doing this, then he needed to be stopped while it was still possible, before he made too much progress.
Quote:As though it weren't blindingly obvious, my point was about the speed of tracking down a disease source. I never alleged any other connection with Legionnaire's disease. One of the most annoyingly stupid things about you liberals is that if I make an analogy between two things relating to one, specific feature they share, you can be counted on to try and negate the analogy by listing a difference between them that has nothing to do with what was being compared.
parados wrote:Your may have misunderstood my use of the term source. Let me explain. The logic is not to find the specific individual source but rather to the source (place) that the infection occurred at. In your mall example, the mall would be found to be the likely source of the infection within 48 hours of the first 3 cases. WHO was the source would probably not be known that soon but that is not important in controlling the outbreak. Only the likelyhood of having come in contact would be important for quarantine purposes. Let me illustrate based on the CITATION I posted about how small pox works. After initial contact with smallpox, people would start to get sick 12-15 days later. Assume 1000 people were infected. Some or most would not go to see a Dr on the first day of symptoms. A few might, the first 3 in my example. Within 2 days, those first 3 would be diagnosed. At the first diagnosis, CDC would be informed and they would start a major program to identify and control the outbreak. The diagnosis would cause a search for other cases. Within 24 hours of the first cases several more cases would have presented themselves to hospitals. It would be easy to see a pattern of where those people were. Many would be workers at the mall. Others would have been at the mall. Within 48 hours, the mall would be the known source of the infection and all persons that had been at that mall would be advised to see a Dr....
First of all, your analysis is based on the idea that no one who is infected can infect someone else for 3 days, and I doubt that applies to all diseases. It seems to me, though that if the disease were initiated in a mall containing a thousand people, and, say, 200 were actually infected, then, before they could come in for quarantine, they could come in contact with numerous other clusers of people. Specifically, let is say that your 3 day limits applies, and 199 of those 200 people come in for quarantine. But let is assume that one of them doesn't come in for 5 days. During his two days of being contagious, he interacts with 30 other clusters of people and a few people individually. Now we have to find all of them. Furthermore, the enemy volunteer who tries to spread it at the mall will actually come into contact with a few other people not in the mall during the time before he dies. I think you can see that this thing cannot reliably be controlled, especially if the perpetrators are trying to kill as many people as possible. What if the used two malls and a movie theater? None of this would be difficult for them. Also, I think your estimates of the efficiency of the authorities is optimistic. Even in the case of a familiar germ such as smallpox, doctors can initially make a more mundane diagnosis, or they may send out blood work to a lab which adds delay.
parados wrote:Most instance of Legionnaire's are traced to the site where it originated. Why do you think it was called Legionnaire's in the first place? The site where it was contracted was known. The germ that causes it is known. How the germ usually infects people is known. Failure to clean air conditioning systems is the usual cause.
http://www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au/health-public-affairs/mhcs/publications/5155.html We don't know WHO sent the anthrax letters but we have tracked down their route pretty well. Your scenario wasn't anonymous letters, it was people in a mall.
The mall would be KNOWN because the first people sick would have all been at that mall.
Brandon9000 wrote:The point is not whether the causes were eventually known, the point is that in both of these cases, learning much more than was immediately apparent was extraordinarily slow, and they had theories ultimately proven wrong before they finally got it right. Yes, because the outbreak of Legionnaire's disease occured at a hotel, they knew it was in the hotel, but they were very slow in learning what caused it and, in fact, came within a hair's breadth of failing. My point is that your idea that the thing will be tracked down 48 hours from the 3rd diagnosed case is not borne out by history.
parados wrote:I had a good laugh at this one Brandon. It appears I was pretty clear when I referred to mall as the source. They knew WHERE the outbreak occurred in the first case of Legionnaire's disease rather quickly. I highlighted my statement in red that you ignored to make your argument. It took a while to isolate the precise germ and the source of that germ. The purpose of quarantine is to prevent the spread of a contagious disease. In order to prevent the spread you only need to know who might have come in contact with the disease not what particular person was the initial source. Are you attempting to argue that smallpox would take months to figure out what it was? You didn't propose that Saddam was using NEW disease. You used existing and known ones. We know what Hantavirus is. We know about smallpox.
My intended point was only that whatever does need to be figured out for any particular bioweapon attack, there are historical precedents for the idea that the authorities may act slowly and be stumped for awhile. They have certainly not done well with the Anthrax attack. What about infecting people by mailing letters?
