In the past few months, the world has gotten a crash course on spreading viral infections. Some places are in denial about the possibility of a horrible outbreak in their city and town, and that includes Las Vegas, a petri dish dependent on lots of tourists all touching the same dice over and over. Many people are pretending COVID-19 isn’t happening and going back to business as usual. But as chemical and biological weapons specialist Dan Kaszeta pointed out on Twitter, business as usual is pretty bad, too.
Kaszeta tweeted a warning that said, “Never get in a pool in las Vegas. Don’t even touch the water.”
As a specialist in chemical and biological warfare, take this warning from me. Never get in a pool in Las Vegas. Don’t even touch the water.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 24, 2020
I provide this Twitter timeline as a much needed public service
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 24, 2020
This turned out to be a pretty controversial statement, and he tried to explain why in a brief tweet that definitely paints enough of a picture for me:
Cocaine, STDs, and laxatives are a bad combo.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 24, 2020
But I guess there are a lot of people who feel very passionately about swimming in a Las Vegas pool for some reason. Probably some of them have a financial stake in the reputation of these pools, still others don’t want to think about the cocaine disease poop water they’re floating in. Kaszeta decided to go deeper and explain exactly why he knows what he knows:
“Las Vegas pool enthusiast” twitter is pushing back on this. I’ll explain what I know. https://t.co/xzypKMGQJl
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
The broad outlines of my career in chemical, biological, and radiological stuff are outlined in this thread. https://t.co/VFrWle1ZMn
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
I was the chemical and biological terrorism guy at the White House Military Office and one of a relatively few people in a good position to advocate stuff at the working level as opposed to the top-down policy level
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
As part of a pro-bono effort to help other government agencies prepare along these lines, I gave seats in my training courses that would otherwise go unfilled to people from other agencies.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Eventually, due to my contacts and alumni from my course, I had a reasonable network of people in various departments and agencies across the US govt gradually building capability and capacity on chem and bio terrorism.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
“Dan, ya gotta help me. I’m working this case in Vegas. It’s probably nothing but it could be a bio thing. But I need access to a lab that can keep this on the downlow until we know what the deal is.”
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Part of the forensic integrity of such a process is the inclusion of blanks as control samples. Such as empty bags and tubes that weren’t used, samples of background material, and such.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
You can see where this is going.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Can I??
Now, the lab, wisely and in accordance with good processes, did not know which sample was which. It turns out the “suspicious” liquid that had kicked off the investigation was something relatively harmless like glycerine.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
It was, to use a technical phrase “a shop of horrors”
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
What is in the biochemist’s Shop of Horrors?
He writes, “Alarming levels of Giardia and Cryptosporidium, both highly resistant to chlorine. A huge number of metabolites from human urine. Fecal matter, human, mammal, and avian. Trace amounts of cocaine, ketamine, and several different opiates,” as well as adenoviruses, tularemia, and campylobacter., none of which are things I’ve ever heard of and yet I’m sure I don’t want them inside me.
It was, to use a technical phrase “a shop of horrors”
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
A soup of other things that I didn’t even know existed. There I was at 3 am reading my manuals.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
I went and got Potomac river water and sent it in. It was safer.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Long story made short – chlorination kills some things, but not others. “Las Vegas pools are clean and safe” is not the hill I’d choose to die on.
Have a nice day.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
People continued to argue with him, but this is his position:
What happens in Vegas… stays in the pool water.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
And some wanted to know about public pools in general. He seems to think Vegas pools are uniquely bad for specific reasons, but none are that great:
I’d speculate that is merely a matter of degrees. It’s a hot dry desert in Vegas and the water is constantly evaporating, so maybe it is worse there than in cooler climes. The water evaporates but the junk doesn’t.
— Dan Kaszeta (@DanKaszeta) May 26, 2020
Damn. Coronavirus already had be scared to breathe air, now water is being taken away? On the bright side, I swam in a Vegas pool over a year ago and still live. Beating the odds in Vegas, baby!
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