Posted on 07/13/2018 8:10:03 PM PDT by Olog-hai
U.S. regulators Friday approved the first treatment for smallpox — a deadly disease that was wiped out four decades ago — in case the virus is used in a terror attack.
Smallpox, which is highly contagious, was eradicated worldwide by 1980 after a huge vaccination campaign.
But people born since then haven’t been vaccinated, and small samples of the smallpox virus were saved for research purposes, leaving the possibility it could be used as a biological weapon.
Maker SIGA Technologies of New York has already delivered 2 million treatments that will be stockpiled by the government, which partially paid for the development of the drug, called TPOXX.
To test the drug’s effectiveness, monkeys and rabbits were infected with a similar virus and then given the drug. More than 90 percent survived, the company said. Its safety was tested in several hundred healthy volunteers, who were not infected with smallpox. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_smallpox_incident
Weaponized Smallpox got ‘loose’ in the old Soviet Union in 71’.
Are they telling us something?
Isn’t smallpox one of those diseases that’s kept only in labs?
Of course, they won’t have enough vaccines for us serfs.
Bring out your dead ping
They’re playing this up, but downplayed Ebola during the previous administration.
I had an vaccination when I was a wee lad, so am not overly worried. Why don’t we do that these days even if it is supposedly gone.
Wait... so it was eradicated thanks to vaccines, but now there’s a “first” treatment for it?
It's not a vaccine, it's a "treatment". Which means it's given after you've contracted the virus not as a preventative measure.
“Smallpox, which is highly contagious, was eradicated worldwide by 1980 after a huge vaccination campaign.“
Apparently not.
L
Small localized, accidental outbreaks can probably be managed; there were several in mostly clear areas towards the end of eradication. But an intentional, widely seeded outbreak would be the worst imaginable biowarfare scenario. Since we can't trust dead Soviets made that impossible our best option is to have as good a defense as possible so perps won't think they can take us out or down far enough to justify the holy hell we'd unleash on anyone responsible.
To that end we took the old vaccine stock, showed it still worked and could work even if significantly diluted. Then we developed a new vaccine and manufactured a bunch of it. I just read we now have over 300 million vaccine units stored now. And now, enough of this, good on paper and in test animals, new drug to treat 2 million cases. Not enough to treat the whole world, but that should be enough to keep fortress America around.
Oh, and by the way for us folks old enough to have be vaccinated back in the day, as well as those vaccinated when it was restarted for the military. Surviving actually smallpox provided pretty good lifelong immunity. The immunity from vaccination wasn't as strong or long lasting although its was clearly worth it when getting the real disease was a realistic threat. When leaks from the old USSR revived the old fears researchers went through the old data. They concluded that while being vaccinated in the distant past didn't do a lot to keep you from contracting smallpox, but it did significantly reduce your risk of dying from it. A normal human immune system can defeat smallpox, but it's a race. Even a small head start helps.
SEIU’s Andy Stern was/is on SIGA’s board.
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