[TomB]

FYI

[Grampa Dave]

"It can also be spread by infected linens or clothes: It was probably first used as a biological weapon during the French and Indian Wars by British soldiers who deliberately gave blankets that had been used by smallpox patients to American Indians."

You had a little "scoop" re this part of the article this past weekend!

[meridia]

Indexing

[GWfan]

Thanks for the very sane article in a sea of hysteria.

[riri]

Thanks. I´m still curious about the flight in Seattle though. I emailed the link and told them I thought it was irresponsible journalism to never follow up a story like that. I´m sure it was to no avail but it made me feel a little better.

[tallhappy]

It is spread through face-to-face contact, by means of infected saliva or respiratory droplets, usually in a closed setting.

Which is what I kept saying on the other thread and you could not understand.

[tallhappy]

Second, smallpox is not immediately contagious. A person infected with smallpox does not become contagious until he or she is too sick to be walking around.

Once again. Wrong. Especially in a population where people are vaccinated against the disease.

[tallhappy]

Tom, here is another confusing post by you on the other thread.

You say:

Go on, go back and look. I only say "some around here needlessly trying to scare people." And you jump in soon after that defending yourself. I must have touched a rew nerve, no?

That was in post 293

It is a rather strange thing for you to have sadi because in post 289 you had said to me:

You are scared to death of smallpox, and it seems you want everyone else to be also. from 289

Do you even know what you are saying from post to post?

I was dismayed by your very quick dsecent in to emotionalism and attempts to personalize this which I don't think is appropriate for a discussion on this subject.

It too bad because we generally agree about our ability to combat small pox if, God forbid, there were to be a release of it by terrorists.

[nomad]

I`m not trying to help any bad guys, but before we dismiss the threat posed by smallpox lets realize you don`t need "rocket scientists" to do this.

What if they had say 12 or so guys willing to die, arranged in cells of three around the country, then they isolated and infected 1 individual from each group in some safe house, with smallpox, and waited for them to get sick. The other 2 guys of the cells could then use their human guinea pigs as an infection source and spread the virus laden pus over a wide area, hell, if they use one carrier/guinea pig from each group (keeping the other fresh and unexposed) then when the first gets sick replace him with a fresh (and formerly uninfected) carrier/guinea pig, the only limitation to its spread (aside from vaccine, or getting caught) would be enough idiots/"martyrs", and the quarenteening of an area.

If you had enough of these *ssholes spread around the country, do you think it would work?

[RottiBiz]

We have something of a model protocol for this emergency activity: In New York City in late March 1947, a man arrived from Mexico, sick with smallpox. He was hospitalized, but the disease was not recognized until two other cases in the hospital were identified. These individuals were isolated, medical personnel inoculated, and a decision made to inoculate all New Yorkers who had not been vaccinated recently. In just over a month, more than 6 million residents were immunized. In the end, that smallpox epidemic resulted in only 12 cases—demonstrating the effectiveness of preparedness and a systematic, scientifically sound response.

For what it's worth, the author neglects to mention that in 1947 most New Yorkers had been vaccinated for smallpox. As a born and bred New Yorker, I know that children were required to have vaccinations before attending school and we even got booster vaccinations in high school.

Almost no one has been vaccinated in the past thirty years. I think the above mentioned scenario would be quite different today.