Duley, who sought a protection order because she feared Ivins would come after her when he found out she had cooperated with the investigators, told the court . . .

Interesting. But did Ivins ever say he would come after Duley?

However, while this account of Ivins’ behaviour is troublesome, it does not constitute proof or a confession, and thus in order to indict the scientist the FBI would have had to bring robust evidence that Ivins was indeed the person behind the worst bioterrorist attack in the US that killed 5 people, caused the postal system to almost grind to a halt and cost an estimated 25 billion dollars. But there appear to be many questions, and the picture is further clouded by the fact that the FBI is not revealing much

I am still not convinced that the social worker Duley is all that authoritative on Ivins as the media makes her seem.

Isn’t that how it worked in V for Vendetta? They created the disease and the vaccine and got rich off the vaccine. Only there wasn’t enough vaccine for the rest of the world.

(1) The theory that the strain that hit Europe in 1347 was marmot plague. Russian microbiologists believe that different strains of yersinia pestis cycle in different ground mammals. And the strain that cycles in marmots living in Mongolia and along its border with Russia apparently goes for the lungs like a heat seeking missile.

(2) The fact the the Mongols had declared peace against everybody in the region some decades past. This created conditions such that long-distance caravans got much safer to operate. Which meant more of them. Which jacked up the odds that some poor lot would camp close to the wrong bloody marmots one time too often. And bring something back with them they hadn’t intended to.

Long story short, Bubonic Plague, a.k.a. yersinia pestis, isn’t all that contagious unless one of two things happens.

(1) It goes for the lungs. When that happens (fortunately, not often), you get pneumonic plague, which is airborne H2H contagious. Or …

(2) Local sanitation goes completely down the toilet.

Because Bubonic plague isn’t airborne H2H contagious. It needs a double vector. It cycles in small mammals like rats, or mice, or prairie dogs, or marmots. It has to use a secondary vector to make the jump to humans.

The way it got started in Europe in 1347 had roots in the Great Famine of 1315-1317, and the fact that ABSOLUTELY NOBODY bathed EVER. Which gave the plague flea, xenopsylla cheopis, the entering wedge …

Plague has been endemic in the Southwestern US since 1900. It’s all through the prairie dog towns. But absent sanitation standards which are literally lousy, it’s about 10,000 times less likely to kill you than common seasonal influenza is.

If we have more than two dozen cases in the entire country in a year, it’s considered a prodigy of nature.