Everyone’s making the assumption that a ‘smallpox attack’ would involve the ‘wildtype’ virus that was responsible for pandemics prior to its eradication. That’s the virus all the vaccine stock is geared toward.
Those vaccines would have 0% effectiveness against a weaponized version. In that event the vaccines would be wasteful monetarily and unnecessarily dangerous themselves. Smallpox was a dangerous vaccine. There’s a reason it became ‘optional’ even before it was wiped out globally. Lots of side effects. Especially in kids.
In the event of a weaponized smallpox attack we’d waste billions of dollars vaccinating the population with a useless vaccine. Not to mention all the side effects. AND we’d still lose millions of people to the terror virus.
But it’d be a great reason to establish martial law.
If this is the same Siga vaccine that was discussed last year it hasn’t even been tested thoroughly. Its effectiveness is essentially unknown. But hey, what’s a half a $billion$ between campaign bundlers...
The Aralsk test killed bunches of people who were:
A - wearing suits/protection
B - vaccinated to the gills
The only reason it stopped was that the main effect was out to sea, and that the affected land area was isolated so the thing burned itself out.