Naloxone is that standard antidote if opoid poisoning is suspected, not atropine. But never mind, if novichok was actually deadlier than VX, atropine would have to be administered very quickly and seems pretty obvious that didn't happen. If Skripals were poisoned by novichok on their front door (and that what has been reported) then they walked around for hours before showing symptoms. In the second case, the man became sick many hours after woman became sick. So, again, not consistent with fast acting lethal poison.
“Known by its U.S. Army code name, it is a clear, colorless liquid with the consistency of motor oil,”
read the CFR statement. “A fraction of a drop of VX, absorbed through the skin, can fatally disrupt the nervous system. Although a cocktail of drugs can serve as an antidote, VX acts so quickly that victims would have to be injected with the antidote almost immediately to have a chance at survival.”
When Kim Jon-un's half-brother was poisoned, he was carrying 12 bottles of the antidote. Why couldn't he use them?
IIRC earlier stories about Novichok said that it can be tricky to make it 'just right' with regard to the lethality.
The story of how Dawn and Charlie got contaminated is still a bit unclear, but an article I just read on the BBC said that Dawn sprayed her wrists and fell ill about 15 minutes later.
Charlie's contamination was supposed to be from something like screwing in the atomizer in the bottle and getting some on his hands while he did that, but then he immediately washed the 'perfume' off his hands. I am thinking that washing his hands helped reduce his dosage, so that a smaller amount was left to sink through his skin and into his body and that could be why it took longer for him to fall ill.
But if you go back to the Skripals both falling ill at exactly the same time, neither of them apparently able to see the other getting sick and call an ambulance? That surely suggests a fairly similar dose at almost exactly the same time. I would think at least one of them would have used the bathroom and washed their hands in the restaurant they went to. And surely the longer the person takes ill after the point of contamination the more variation in timing of taking ill? So falling ill at exactly the same time suggests to me they had a dose slightly lower than that of Dawn but probably less than an hour before they sat on the bench, and maybe a lot less than an hour.
It is very confusing how it went down. But without knowing the exact recipe and the exact amount applied, I don't think the articles about the lethality of Novichok are 'wrong' per se, but they're a generalization based on a single recipe and limited tests, so in the real world there could be a greater variety in the recipes plus people getting different amounts on their skin, and some washing straight away after (like Charlie did) and some not (like Dawn). Without looking it up, I think words like lethality are being used in non-scientific sense, similar to how the word 'theory' has different meanings in general use compared to the scientific meaning. But most deadly poisons can be survivable with a small enough dose, especially if the contamination can quickly be removed from the body, and lots of things can be poisonous to us in large enough doses but they can be neutral or even beneficial in much smaller amounts.
And then there's the CNN report which claims the UK managed to find CCTV of the Skripals being contaminated and the attackers hanging around to watch the outcome? That suggests something happened in Salisbury centre, not at the Skripal's house. So what does all this mean for the door handle when it's less likely that both people passing through a door will touch the handle rather than one using the handle and the other following without touching the handle? And how did the policeman get exposed in the Skripal case? Why didn't any other officers attending either scene take ill? If the perpetrators were watching the Skripals get sick, did they still have the poison bottle with them at that point, and then take off through the park, where Charlie found the bottle at some point in the past few months and took it home in its box (closed) and put it aside to give to Dawn as a present?
We've still got a lot more questions than answers over this. And if it is a case of 'spies', either authorized or unofficial, can you ever really prove to the public what you think happened? Even if they could take someone to court for it and have a fully open and televised trial, I don't think you'd get 100% acceptance from the public, you'd have a good five or ten per cent saying that they don't believe it. Without a public televised trial, surely the percentage of 'skeptics' is naturally going to be much higher.
