Thinking Ahead: Should Smallpox Become Reality, What Do We Do?

[ChemistCat]

There is a sizeable, cautious, but not hysterical contingent on FR that believes we may have been exposed to smallpox at some time in the last week. It's not something we know is happening. It's something we think is a reasonable scenario in light of other events. I'm starting this thread as a place to discuss what preparations our nation and communities do NOT seem to be making, and what our personal plans of action are if this CONTAGIOUS bioattack vector eclipses anthrax.

[LizM]

All I can say is I hope not but these stories aren't very comforting.

[ChemistCat]

Smallpox produces the thousands of blisters you see in the photo I posted. But when it takes the blackpox variant, the skin becomes in effect one giant blister, all over, and it lifts away from the layers beneath, dies, and the patient soon dies afterward. The fact that the entire surface of the skin blackens and dies means that more virus is present in the skin, and it has fewer barriers to slow its transmission to anyone who might be around.

I also understand that smallpox is easily transmitted on the feet of flies from sick to healthy individuals. So if we end up tending the sick, keeping flies away from them will be crucial. Perhaps windowscreening may be as significant in any postmodern war on smallpox as it proved to be in combat against malaria.

[FITZ]

Can't it be made like in weeks from cowpox strains?

Yes, that's why I don't understand why they're saying they can have some ready by summer, once the vaccinia virus infects a hosts it reproduces millions of viruses. The government wants to control it like they do everything else. Some good reasons ---the vaccine for smallpox is a live unattenuated virus and can cause serious infections in some people who lack a strong immune system. Then there are lawsuits --they probably want to make sure the dosages of the virus injected are enough but not too many....then there is that political issue of AIDS patients, because they cannot get a live virus vaccine or be exposed to someone who has it. But you can't trust the "experts" in the government or medicine completely either. People just need to become very informed and figure out what they will do. The good thing about this vaccine at least ---unlike the anthrax one ---is that it is a live contagious virus and even when they don't mean for it to be spread to others it happens all the time so it can happen intentionally too.

[LizM]

I sent a private response with my e-mail. I just hope they aren't that stupid. We should and probably would annihilate them if they did this.

[ChemistCat]

I've tried to find a picture of the blackpox variant and have had no luck online. Either it's so nasty that no one photographed it or else it's rare enough that no photographer happened upon a case. I'm hoping it's rare as it appears to have been 100% fatal.

There is a man in my church who contracted a very rare viral infection that resulted in paralysis. He regained function because of the new antiviral treatments; even two years ago, he would never have walked again, and may well have died or become dependant on artificial ventilation for life. It could be that we'll do better than we expect, especially if few contract it and the government acts swiftly enough to lock down the country. Perhaps our medical technology can prevent great loss of life, just as it seems to have done with those exposed to anthrax (anthrax victims are not, fortunately, a large enough population to give us statistically significant data on mortality.)

Oh, it's not going to be good for the economy if that has to happen, though. BUT this nation started out a few tiny puny colonies adrift in a hostile world. We are going to make it through whatever comes.

[zog]

-correct, you stay home, cease having contact with other humans, no exceptions. That's about it if you really want to be safe. Millions of city people just willy nilly "bugging out' to the country will not find a welcome wagon, if it's a big hit with a human to human communicable disease. I hope everyone always has at least a months worth of provisions-including more water than you think you need-stored up wherever they live. And lotsa batteries, and blankets, etc. All that stuff is doable, even in a small apartment. A big attack will fizzle out if no one spreads it beyond the original infected ones.

[boris]

"Build up your immune system and you might survive smallpox without a shot. One expert said vitamin c,e,a and selliniam would help fend off several things."

Where do you get that there selliniam?

[boris]

"McDonalds owns all the cows."

All Your Bovine Are Belong to Us!

--Boris

[fatima]

Did you use a picture because you are unable to express yourself effectively with the the written word?---I like the info on this post.

[loulou]

I had my innoculation at about 4-5 yrs old, for years I have wondered why I kept finding "my scab" & sticking in back on....Now I realize I was afraid I would have to have another "scratch".....Didn't remember that the scab meant it took & I have a very visible scar.

[ChemistCat]

Would you like to weigh in on this?

[FITZ]

What is the difference between the two?

The pictures ChemistCat put up are nothing compared with pictures of blackpox victims.

[zog]

-regarding the article and the reassurances contained in it-I think there's a difference-probably-between plain old vanilla small pox and turbo charged weapons grade small pox. We had operational stealth fighters for twenty years before they officially admitted it-wonder what's out there and how nasty it is in biocootie military lab, Inc.- land?

Bottom line is I ain't betting on wussy civvie-brand strains of anything, nor on any of the medical establishment-public versions- to have much of a clue, either, until they see it for the first time in the emergency rooms..

[ChemistCat]

No matter how smallpox is altered, it can only spread in conventional ways once it has been introduced into the population. The way they highjacked the four planes was instructive to me. If our system hadn't been so OPEN they would never have gotten away with the initial steps. They were clumsy. Their arrogance made people mad, and that made people obstruct them and remember them. They saw a way to use half-trained pilots, some money, and some common tools to make weapons of mass-destruction. Honestly, neither the 9/11 attacks NOR the anthrax-mailings have required a great deal of finesse or cleverness, once the initial ideas were conceived. They were able to use relatively stupid, clumsy, inept agents to carry them out. I'm not going to look for a very sophisticated delivery system of smallpox. Whatever they do it's going to be done in a way analogous to the prior attacks. I can think of ways in which a simple, cheap attack will infect thousands at once, and I can think of ways that will infect only a few at transportation hubs. EITHER WAY, there are actions I can take to protect MY family. Most of those actions require a little prior planning. I thought this thread would be about the planning, not about the threat per se. That's okay, obviously the threat isn't being discussed enough.

But one thing I want to make clear: this isn't something we cannot survive--even if Zog's fears are true and this is going to be a modified smallpox with considerably worse symptoms. (I doubt that Russia was as clumsy with anything they've modified.) The first people to get it are doomed to suffer and possibly die--the rest of us can take action to diminish our family's risk. Influenza can spread so easily because we congregate, we go to work sick, we don't treat it very seriously. (Heck, we don't treat AIDS seriously enough--if we did, far, far fewer people would be infected and none of those would be free to spread it.) EVEN SMALLPOX DOESN'T HAVE TO BE AS EFFECTIVE AS 9/11 WAS. But that will hinge on our behavior! I would really, really like it if the last moment of smugness for the evil ones was 9/11. And if they let smallpox loose on the world, their allah will not be able to save them from the wrath of the rest of us.

[fatima]

The picture showed a baby,is there a way to protect them.Say around 3 months old.Thank you for the info.

[dubyagee]

This thread has some pictures that may be what you're looking for. I don't want to post them here myself. They're very disturbing. Just scroll down a ways.

[ChemistCat]

Thanks. I think.

Here's another current FR smallpox thread: click here

[ChemistCat]

*

[Old Student]

if I were you, I wouldn't bet the house on that...

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Thanks for the ping, and the second one too. I read this thread, thought about, then thought that I had little constructive to add.

That is probably still the case...

However, since I am self employed, I can't stay home locked away in a safe room. I have both a home mortgage and office mortgage to maintain. We live hand to mouth. I'm a young practitioner, no savings, no emergency fund whatsoever. So if I don't work I lose everything.

Since I'm a foot doc, I treat a geriatric population, and I'm always catching whatever is going around. If smallpox is "going around" then I'll probably get it.

Russia's smallpox is supposedly a very virulent form, more highly contagious/shorter incubation. Iraq would have gotten it from Russia. Terrorists here would have gotten it from Iraq.

I cannot obtain vaccines, even as a doc. There are only 12,000,000 full strength vaccines stockpiled in the USA. Some studies suggest this stockpile can be diluted up to 7 fold and still be effective. This makes approximately 90,000,000 doses.

There are over 280,000,000 citizens in the USA.

Bottom line? Not a darn thing really I can do to prepare temporally. I have to work. I will not lose my house and practice because I might get a virus. I am obliged to fulfill the duties in my state in life. I will not leave my family for a few months so they can be in a safe house while I work. We sink or swim together.

What is left? The spiritual. Forgive me my vanity, but I feel it may be appropriate to post this piece here now:

Tonight the Sun No Longer Shines Through the Chapel Window

by Dr Brian J. Kopp
10/23/2001

Every Tuesday night at 7:00pm, I escape to my little place of refuge, an hour of quiet and solitude for just me and my Lord. Our parish opened a Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel two years ago, and I have withdrawn to this place of solitude and peace weekly ever since, to be with Our Lord and pour out my joys and sufferings and fears. I write quietly now from the rear pew, scribbling these notes on the blank pages at the back of my copy of the book "Providence" by Fr. Garrigou-LaGrange, OP.

Tonight I finally noticed that the sun is no longer streaming through the stained glass window at the front of the chapel beside the altar. During late spring, through summer, and into early fall, at some time during my hour of Adoration, the setting sun shines brilliantly through this window. It dazzles my eyes as I look at Jesus Christ present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the exposed Holy Eucharist in the monstrance.

This chapel once served as a place of refuge for the nuns who lived in this convent beside my parish church. The convent now sits quiet and empty, while our faithful pastor has made good use of its old chapel.

Often, as I prayed here during the seasons just past, the gleam of the sunset through this window represented to me the blinding light of His Presence here. It warmed my body and my soul as I came before the Lord, weary, looking for a place of refuge.

Tonight that light is gone. Sunset passed long before I arrived. Darkness shrouds this chapel, but Christ's presence is not dependent on my senses nor the sunlight of the natural world shining above.

Yet this darkness mirrors the melancholy of my soul. "The Winter Blues." "The instinct to hibernate." "Seasonal Affective Disorder" (to use the aseptic terminology of psychology). Regardless of the name, many get varying degrees of this melancholy of mind and soul beginning every year at this time. Each fall for me it is the same, the melancholy descending with the shortening days and falling leaves, withering flowers and migrating geese, my psych and soul mimicking the changes in nature. It abruptly accelerates and grows deeper with the passing of daylight-saving time.

Yet this fall seems to descend more quickly and more harshly. No light shines through the chapel window this evening. And that melancholy of psych and soul is so much more acute this year for myself and for so many souls with whom I have spoken and communicated. That melancholy is amplified many fold by the events of this fall.

Talk to anyone who is deeply spiritual. Even if unable to articulate it, they sense it. There is that sense that this fall is different from all the falls that came before it, for many years, at least in the lives of most who live today. There is a sense, if not of foreboding or fear, then at least of resignation. Anyone with a spiritual sense feels that suffering approaches, suffering on a level and of such a nature unseen in America in many seasons. It is not wise to dwell long on such things, but people of faith, spiritual people, feel it in their souls, and think it quietly, in minds troubled over its implications.

We stand in a Garden of Gethsemane. We know in our soul something awaits. Even if we do not have the perfect foreknowledge Christ had in His Agony, even if we know that we as a nation are sinful while Christ was without sin, we know that this cup shall not pass. Others may deny the cup exists, and some may know in their souls but refuse it. But people of faith know it is time for us to drink of the cup. No one asks for it, but we say, "Not my will but Thy Will be done."

A leader with the moral and spiritual foundation of a Mother Teresa can look politicians in the eye and say, "The fruit of abortion is nuclear war." A leader with the moral and spiritual foundation of a Mother Angelica can look the camera in the eye, with the face of a benevolent pirate, a saintly Italian smile, and a soul of steel, and tell the world that, "We will suffer. Don't ask me how I know, but we will suffer."

They can say publicly that which we can hardly admit to ourselves, or only share with our closest fellow believers. They simply articulate that which our souls, quickened to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, have already warned us.

Our season is passing into the shadow of the death of winter. Our melancholy of soul must not win out over our hope in the Lord. We must steel our souls for the time ahead. Yes, there will be suffering. There will be darkness. The darkness in men's souls will sometimes seem to mimic the darkness about us. Some men's hearts will grow as cold as the winter wind closing upon us. How shall we respond? How shall we persevere?

Nature's God answers, "Do not despair, for I promise yet another spring lies waiting. Persevere. Gird your hearts. Do not let your love grow cold. I will renew all things." His only begotten Son answers, "Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come follow me, and I will give you rest."

A stooped old Polish man, frail and seeming to carry the world's weight on his shoulders, repeats the anthem to all who will hear. "Be not afraid. A springtime of the faith awaits. Persevere! There is hope! The darkness shall be vanquished! Be not afraid!"

*******************

Tonight, the sun is no longer shining through my Adoration Chapel window. A weight still lies on my soul and on the souls of many, as we depart from the garden and begin the climb towards Calvary.

I write these words on the blank pages in the back of a book, "Providence," by Fr. Reginald Marie Garrigou-LaGrange, OP. He taught spiritual theology at the Angelicum in Rome. One of his greatest students was a young Pole, now a stooped old man known to all as John Paul II and beloved by many, traveling across the globe crying out in the darkness, "Be not Afraid!"

Fr. Reginald Marie Garrigou-LaGrange concludes his book on "Providence" with this brief footnote:

"In times of great affliction not a few interior souls have found peace and even joy, though circumstances continued to give immense pain, when through God's inspiration they have conceived the idea of making a vow of self-abandonment to Providence.

"When a soul is prompted by grace to make such a vow and is firmly resolved not to divorce self-abandonment from fidelity to daily duties, the following form [of prayer] may be used. It should be renewed daily during the prayer of thanksgiving:

"Whenever the will of God is expressed in a cross, I will yield myself to it entirely and with a note of joy, paying no regard to what was instrumental in bringing it about. In difficulties that in any way distress me I will avoid all self-probing, introspection, and idle preoccupations; I will steep myself more deeply in confidence, and seek to solve my difficulties through the action of grace. I will take up this attitude of mind and heart and plunge myself in God the instant something occurs to wound me.

"And all this I will do with an exceeding great love."