Another Novichok Poisoning?

[TokyoSushi]

Just breaking news now, how awful, I wonder how on Earth it's happening?

[BoreOfWhabylon]

Just waiting now for Russian Bots to turn up on this thread as they did on the last one.

[NeverTwerkNaked]

Reading the news stories and I’m baffled why the woman was wheeled off to hospital seriously ill and then the bloke went off to a hog roast with his friend

[RunMummyRun68]

This stuff can survive out in the open in wind/rain/snow

Yet police advise wiping down surfaces to decrease the risk of contamination?

Odd

[RunMummyRun68]

never it's not too baffling. He was a bit of a wanderer, she was always wondering where he was/when he would arrive etc

Bit of a 'free spirit' it seems

[TheFifthKey]

Runmumny, I agree. The security minister (?) on radio 4 was saying about how there’s a low risk but people should take precautions, but what bloody precautions? I mean, I’m nowhere near so not personally worried but it just seems so woolly and imprecise.

And very convenient that they’re (ex?) drug addicts - less public sympathy, easily discredited, plausible reason for them to have a syringe/small container...

[CantankerousCamel]

Not secret agents as locally known.

What’s truly weird about all this, is that the only reason the two original poisoning victims are alive, is because SDH has red alert protocol to treat poisoning and specifically nerve gases. It’s becsuse we have Porton so close so the hospital is prepared for any issues.

Those people wouldn’t be alive had they been in any other city.

So for two MORE people to be poisoned here is odd, there is no way they were poisoned sirh the intent of being killed or it would not have been here.

They had been to a local junkie spot previously and there was most likely drug paraphnialia in the house as we were (locally) told it was a drug overdose.

It’s al very odd and of course, now that civvies have been attacked, we are locally, rightfully freaked out.

[CantankerousCamel]

Are they like human gunea pigs?

IS the agent being tested to see how it can spread to ‘unsavoury’ members of the public?

Or did they simply go to a place the toxin was lingering, but how is that the local crack/smack house and how has no one else come into contact with it?

It’s just so confusing. We weren’t too freaked out by the Russians, was more national outcry than local but this has really affected local public feeling

[iVampire]

I think the news so far is baffling as it raises so many questions. But reports say there is a major investigation underway, and it has more of an idea about what’s happened than has been released so far

[OutwiththeOutCrowd]

This time round there was not the synchronised onset of symptoms in both victims that was such a baffling feature of the first incident. The Skripals seemed to deteriorate simultaneously and so quickly that neither one was able to call for assistance for the other. Onset seems to have been slower in the current case with the woman succumbing several hours before the man and the man able to phone for an ambulance for the woman.

Interesting that they had recently visited the park where the Skripals were found on a bench and that, according to reports, one at least – the man – was a registered heroin addict.

I wondered if he had come across a syringe containing the remnants of Novichok in the park and picked it up. Novichok in a syringe may not degrade to the extent it would if exposed directly to the elements. But why the park and not near the Skripal’s home if the door handle was the point of contamination?

Could it be the case that the Skripals were being followed and that the perpetrator struck twice? Could he have somehow applied a second larger dose in the park, which would explain the simultaneous catastrophic collapse of both Skripals? (Admittedly, though, I would have thought that the park would have been thoroughly searched and any discarded syringes would have been found.)

I find it very difficult not to speculate but my main thought is that I hope the medics are able to help these two desperately unlucky people as they did the Skripals.

[PookyHook]

The BBC showed some footage from someone's mobile phone, which was supposedly of the scene outside the couple's house when one of them was taken to hospital on Saturday. There were police, a fire engine and a large cordoned off area. Yet the official line is that they thought the couple had OD'd on heroin or crack cocaine until the past couple of days. Seems bizarre that there'd be that kind of emergency service response for a suspected heroin overdose...

I noticed this too. They said that they assumed it was a drug overdose until the symptoms raised the alarm that it was poisoning. But why the need for all the hazmat suits in the ambulance footage if they thought it was drugs?

[maxiflump1]

@PookyHook as a first responder we are warned about the danger of fentanyl exposure. It's often used as a heroin substitute but is very easy to cross contaminate so that MAY be why he paramedics in that video had their suits on

drugabuse.com/first-responders-worry-about-accidental-fentanyl-exposure/

[RunMummyRun68]

The lady went to hospital first.... presume normal response. One ambulance

Second call to emergency services once the man fell ill. By this time hospital knew it was more than a drug overdose and alerted emergency services to the fact it was possible nerve agent. Could this be why all 3 services attended....on the second more informed call

[RunMummyRun68]

Hazmat suits at second call as it became obvious first call with female victim was poisoning

[IrmaFayLear]

It is absolutely preposterous that a syringe was left lying around in a city-centre park for months. In a place where it could be easily found - and not by children or a dog, but by a middle-aged pair who probably were not in the habit of crawling under benches or into bushes. It just doesn't ring true.

[longtompot]

The two parks where these things have happened, or the victims have visited, are two different areas. A good 5 mins walk between them.

I believe the house in Amesbury is rented by the man, and the woman has either only just moved there with him, or she lives in the hostel in Salisbury.

It is scary being a Salisbury resident having this happen not once but twice. I just hope the reason why these two have been affected is just by poor chance of coming across the previous incidents poison. I just hope they both recover quickly and can tell those that can help just what they found.

[borntobequiet]

Ha! The last one was pretty coincident with all tha Cambridge Analytica revelations. So what else is happening?
But I am attracted to conspiracy theories.

[PookyHook]

I could have sworn I heard someone on the news saying that the symptoms didn't become apparent until days later, so they wouldn't have known on the second call, which was on the same day wasn't it?

I suppose fentanyl could explain it, but it still seems like an over the top response for a drug overdose.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I think I'm going to stop trying to gather discussion on to one thread, it's gone a bit wrong. It's what I get for being bossy.

So the police are using the hypothesis that it was on a discarded item of some sort.

[FortheloveofCod]

Both incidents happened close to Porton Down, yet nobody is interested in investigating the possibility that it could be someone working there.

Much more convenient to blame the Russians on the brink of an expenses scandal!

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

Did Porton Down have any Novicok before the skripal’s were poisoned?
As far as I’m aware they didn’t.

It does seem unlikely that the second poisoning isn’t in some way linked to the first even if it wasn’t intentional.

[WinnieTheW0rm]

If Porton Down has a batch of Novichok, then I suppose someone could steal some.

But it's not the kind of stuff you can knock up in your lunchbreak. And I doubt that every person working in the relevant part of the organisation could be in on a plot. So if they do have it, it shouid be simple to check it's all present and correct.

[OutwiththeOutCrowd]

I'm feeling guilty about spreading misinformation earlier longtompot and thanks for clarification about the two separate park areas! I'm including a map showing the Maltings where the Skripals were found and Queen Elizabeth Gardens visited by the second couple - close but separate areas.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

If Porton Down had Novicok I think they must have been making it illegally. I’d have to go back and check from some of the news stories st the time but I think you need permission from the OPCW to make it. And the OPCW had said that no lab had applied for permission to do that.

And while the structure was widely known, I don’t think the steps required to get to that were. It seems unlikely one rogue person at Porton Down would be able to do that without anyone noticing.

[PerkingFaintly]

by a middle-aged pair who probably were not in the habit of crawling under benches or into bushes.

If it's correct that one or both of them are drug-users, then surely they're rather more likely to have been crawling about in bushes than the average middle-aged couple? Eg looking for a quiet place to inject. And more likely to be handling containers or syringes chucked in those bushes (or wherever it was)?

The police will be very interested in what these poor folks will be able to reveal when they recover (as I have great hopes they will).

[Member]

If anyone gets a chance to watch channel 4 news on +1, the time line/locations explained better