Funny enough, a number of years ago a giant 4chan archive surfaced which included a lot of the very first SCP posts that had been lost. It actually confirmed that 173 was posted after Blink aired, meaning it was almost certainly inspired by the episode. Not that it makes the SCP worse, but it’s some interesting lore.
Probably not. If a virus is too deadly, it kills its hosts before it can spread. That’s why SARS didn’t turn into a pandemic.