A friend was in the Air Force when it handed back a base to the host country. They took everybody on the base, gave them zeroxed photos of every type nuke we’d produced to date and had them walk the entire base and search every building holding those photos. Now, if we’d kept accurate count of the nukes, why would they do that?
Here’s the problem. For the most part, a bureaucracy can’t do anything competently. A few years ago the AF, without realizing they had done so, loaded six nukes onto a B1 and it flew across country unaware they were carrying a potential Armageddon. I’m confident SAC never lost track of them but that was their only job. To the AF that’s just one of many jobs.
So, losing a few vials of super deadly virus now and again is to be expected.
I can imagine this. What they described is basically one form of a vaccine, that uses a fraction of a virus, part of its outer coat recognizable to the immune system, to incite an immune response.
So these were likely experimental vaccines that were to be tested on animals, but are not yet approved for human use.
“...had no ability to spread.”
Then why keep in a vial?