DEADLY VIRUS FOUND IN GOVERNMENT REFRIGERATOR

Earlier this month, the federal government quietly announced that they had discovered a number of vials containing the deadly smallpox virus in an unsecured laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland. Just imagine; one of the deadliest diseases in human history was found, completely by chance, during a routine office move! Employees of the National Institutes of Health came across the viable samples as they prepared to move their old facility from the local campus, managed by the Food and Drug Administration staff, to a currently undisclosed location.

To make matters even worse, the ensuing investigation found an additional twelve boxes that contained more than 300 vials labeled with the names of biological agents such as dengue, influenza, Q fever, and rickettsia. But in a vain attempt to quell your suspicion that perhaps the federal government isn’t completely and totally inept, the official U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently released the following statement as part of their formal press release.

Overlooking such a sample collection is clearly unacceptable. The FDA has already taken steps to ensure that similar material is not present in its other cold storage areas by initiating a thorough review of all common cold storage spaces. The agency is in the process of reviewing its policies and procedures in order to implement a corrective action plan so that potentially hazardous samples are never overlooked in the future.

The key phrase here is “common cold storage spaces” which are also known simply as office refrigerators. Of course, under international convention, there are supposed to be only two stashes of this deadly virus; one at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia and another located at a similar facility somewhere in Novosibirsk, Russia.

But even as government officials unwittingly expose their employees to anthrax, and scabies continues to flow unchecked across the border… you can easily rest assured fellow citizens! Because if the zombie virus truly exists, the federal government has promised to scour the “cold storage spaces” and refrigerators of every office across the nation, just in case a fifty year-old vial of Trioxin happens to be stashed behind your coworker’s box of Hot Pockets.

UPDATE: While reviewing our archives, we noticed that the official press release from the FDA mentioned in our original article was no longer available. Apparently it took years before the National Institutes of Health (NIH) appointed a Blue Ribbon Panel to review this incident.

Per the official report, which was finally issued in May of 2017, it should be noted that this episode was only one of “several biosafety lapses involving federally regulated pathogens that occurred in … 2014.” So, we’ll be sure to followup when more information is available!