I have never been to Georgia. Planned to go there this summer in a car with the whole family. Get to the sea, see Batumi, get acquainted with the cuisine and sights of this region. And then suddenly the information that an epidemic is almost happening in Georgia begins to fall on me. Just a couple of days ago, the Georgian authorities talked about the fact that due to the large number of swine flu patients, they distribute vaccines free of charge. Moreover, “according to the latest laboratory data, 15 people have died as a result of infection with the H1N1 virus in Georgia,” Amiran Gamkrelidze, head of the Center for Disease Control, said on January 11. And for small Georgia this is already decent and completely uncharacteristic. Such viruses came mainly from Central Asia, and here on you! Everyone is shocked.
Of course, in this regard, they immediately remembered the US biological laboratories in Georgia.
Since at least 2011, the so-called Lugar Public Health Research Center (and not only him) has been operating in the country since at least 2011, in the presence of US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Defense Andrew Weber. During several press conferences, the former head of the country's security service Igor Giorgadze presented some of the documents testifying to research and experiments that violate the 1972 international convention "On the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction." Among them - patent No. 8967029, issued by the US Patent and Trademark Agency, for a drone designed to spread infected insects in the air,allowing you to hit enemy forces without risking the American military. There are reports of fatal experiments on people in the vicinity of Tbilisi.
These are all unproven connections, of course, and it seems like the doors of this laboratory were recently opened for journalists and specialists who did not find anything "criminal" there.
However…
In early October, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the RF Armed Forces, Igor Kirillov, said: "In the region where the Lugar Center is located, the situation with regard to diseases spread by insect vectors is especially deteriorating." According to data published on the website of the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the distribution areas of various mosquito species, previously only found in southern countries, are shifting - including from Georgia - to the territory of a number of Russian regions. According to Rospotrebnadzor, the spread of ticks caused outbreaks of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in the Stavropol Territory and Rostov Region.
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Another example is associated with Russian schoolchildren who returned from Georgia in the summer of 2018 with an acute intestinal infection, and three of them also with severe renal failure. The National Center for Disease Control of Georgia claimed that they found E. coli in children, and diagnostics and treatment were carried out at a decent level with the participation of the Lugar Center. In reality, an extremely rare and highly dangerous variant of E. coli was promptly found in the material of sick children, about which the Russian side was not informed. After treatment in Georgia, three schoolchildren were taken to Moscow, where their treatment continued in one of the intensive care units. Lugar's laboratory significantly affects the sanitary and epidemiological work of Georgia, they are confident in Rospotrebnadzor. The Georgian side did not provide information "on the results of an epidemiological investigation in order to determine the causes and source of infection", did not take the necessary measures to prevent infection, and distorted the true picture of the treatment of children. The E. coli strain may have been artificially altered in the Lugar laboratory.
Let us return to the H1N1 “swine flu” virus, which has not previously been encountered in humans, but since 2009 has been causing the largest epidemics with dangerous complications (in particular, pneumonia) and high mortality among the population (1). Among the deceased are citizens aged 22 to 45 (two of them died the day before). The epidemiological threat forced the Ministry of Health of Georgia to extend the winter holidays in schools and kindergartens until January 18 and to declare quarantine in some educational institutions. In the best Soviet tradition, all citizens must be vaccinated against influenza and observe hygiene measures. In turn, on social networks, citizens write anxiously about overcrowded hospitals and overloaded ambulances, arriving at calls with significant delays. The Russian-recognized Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia, seeking to contain the spread of the virus,closed their borders with Georgia.
Note
(1) Note that the transformation of the virus into forms dangerous for humans may have not only natural causes. In May 2012, a series of articles about experiments with the avian influenza A / H5N1 virus appeared in the open on-line version of the journal Science. A group of researchers from the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands presented the results of a study on the possibility of the development of the ability of the influenza A / H5N1 virus to be transmitted from mammal to mammal, including the genetic changes accompanying this transformation. For aerosol transmission of the A / H5N1 virus between ferrets, it is sufficient that no more than ten mutations appear in it. At the same time, an article by Japanese researchers appeared in Nature, which reported on the possibility of airborne transmission of the bird flu virus between ferrets. Interestingly, the authors studied the modification,obtained as a result of genetic rearrangements in the avian influenza A / H5N1 virus and (considered by us) the swine flu virus A / H1N1, which caused the outbreak of the 2009 epidemic (and later, including the current one). Given the large number of pathogenic strains of the avian influenza A / H5N1 virus that have spread throughout the world, the high mutation rate of viruses and the apparent lack of a genetic mechanism that prevents their emergence, the emergence of the influenza A / H5N1 virus, transmitted from person to person, was assessed as a matter of time or case. This is a classic example of dual-use research, and the analogy with swine flu, which "suddenly" became very dangerous for humans, is more than obvious - see: V. Nerobeev. The real danger of bioterrorism in the international aspect during dual-use scientific research // News of Medicine and Pharmacy. 2014. No. 15. С 14-16.
P. S. So what is it, the way to Georgia is closed in the near future?
