Posted on 08/09/2002 10:21:22 AM PDT by tellw
EXCERPTS BELOW:
WASHINGTON — Should Americans be allowed to make an informed choice to receive the smallpox vaccine? I believe they should and that individual choice should become the central component of a new national policy aimed at protecting us from the possible use of smallpox as a weapon of mass destruction by terrorists.
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I believe the threat of a smallpox attack outweighs the risks of providing smallpox vaccinations to a well-informed public. Along with the phased-in vaccination of military personnel and first responders, every American should be given this option. Such a policy is a sensible public health response that would enhance our national security.
(Excerpt) Read more at janes.com ...
I dunno. My personal physician (whom I trust implicitly) has warned that we could be in for some very nasty side effects if we are forced to take smallpox vaccine again. Of course everyone in my fmily has already had it years ago, but there are the grandchildren to consider.
Nuclear, Biological, & Chemical Warfare- Survival Skills, Pt. II
Smallpox vaccinations are often fatal for the immune-impaired, especially those with AIDS/HIV. Immune-impairment is usually caused by medical treatment, commonly for heart ailments and cancer, diseases like hepatitis, and intravenous drug use. AIDS/HIV victims are only a small fraction of the millions of immune-impaired Americans. Many people with functioning immune systems but other conditions, both normal (pregnant ladies, babies under a year old, etc.) and abnormal (some skin disorders, especially eczema), are more susceptible to vaccination-caused complications which sometimes afflict even the healthiest. These groups should not be vaccinated.
The major problem is that people vaccinated against smallpox are briefly dangerous to these groups. Smallpox vaccine uses a "live" virus related to smallpox, called vaccinia, which produces a small oozing sore on the inoculation site 2-3 days later which quickly scabs over, plus flu-like symptoms. About a third have the oozing sore and flu symptoms for longer periods - sometimes several weeks. Contact with pus from the sores (even dried pus floating off and inhaled) can cause a fatal or crippling vaccinia infection in the immune-impaired or complication-susceptible, though that is far less likely to happen than through vaccination.
Experts therefore additionally recommend against smallpox vaccinations of any persons living with the immune-impaired and complication-susceptible. This totals about 25 percent of all Americans.
The usual way to protect people from such secondary infections is to have those recently innoculated whose vaccination sores are still oozing wear a bandage - something like the big knee/ankle bandaid you can find in drugstores - until the sore scabs over. Back when vaccinations were mandatory this was a tiny proportion of the population on any given day, and those were almost entirely young children who stayed at home anyway.
But if millions of adults are voluntarily vaccinated, hundreds of thousands of them will be out on the streets posing threats to the immune-impaired and complication-susceptible. Thousands of them might die, and several times that number could be crippled.
This is not an easy decision.
Up until the time that smallpox was declared irradicated, I was probably vaccinated somewhere between 8 and 12 times. Every person whoever served in the military was vaccinated. School children were vaccinated. Millions were!
I can't say there was not that one in a million incident where someone fell ill or maybe even there was a death. But I have never heard of it.
Smallpox doesn't kill everyone. It seems only about thirty percent actually die from it. The rest are usually disfigured. Older people and those with weak immune systems are at more risk.
As for me, I have told my doctor that I will be first in line as soon as the CDC gets off their butts and allows Americans the protect they need.
The choice is yours.
"The question I have about smallpox is will any smallpox used against us by an enemy be the "wild" strain which older people have been vaccinated against, or will it be a genetically engineered version for which there is no vaccine available. Maybe our new friends the Russians will be able to tell us what they whipped up in their biowarfare labs. It is quite possible that any smallpox vaccine we have in stock now would be completely worthless."
My information is no, it hasn't been that souped up. The Soviets had weaponized smallpox by no later than 1971 (i.e., made it distributable as an aerosol), as shown by the Aralsk incident. Ken Abilek, former deputy director of one of the several major Soviet biowar projects, said in his book, Biohazard, that the Soviet had also developed and produced many tons of the more persistent powdered form of smallpox. The latter is a hideous danger.
The Aralsk incident showed some evidence that the smallpox variety used was somewhat more contagious and lethal than that found in nature, but that evidence is not conclusive. The outbreak was contained through quarentine and vaccination with standard vaccines.
IMO xSoviet biowar smallpox strains are at least at the high end of the range of virulence and lethality of naturally occuring smallpox.
Anyway, couldn't you isolate those who have just been immunized for a couple of days (that needn't mean keeping them in hospitals, you could order them to drive home and stay home for a couple of days)? Alternatively, couldn't you immunize everybody else within a short period of a week or so, and isolate the immunodeficient during that period?
Especially if any danger that vaccinating others might present to the immunodeficient is minimized in one of these ways, shouldn't we bear in mind that the immunodeficient would be those in the greatest danger if a smallpox epidemic ever got started?
That's wild -- as opposed to bioengineered -- smallpox that has the 30% fatality rate. I think something like 50% of those exposed to the Soviet bioengineered variety that was let loose in Kazakhstan around 1970 died.
That's fine with me, but I want mine and dont't want my government interfering with my right to obtain it.
Right now the policy is to wait until there is an outbreak to allow the general public access to the vaccine. Considering that the vaccine can be given up to four days after exposure and still give some protection against smallpox, there would be massive logistical problems in getting most of the US population vaccinated in four days. The more who get vaccinated ahead of time, the fewer who would need to be vaccinated in an emergency. Also, the more who are vaccinated beforehand, the less likely a terrorist orgainization or rogue state would be to release it against the US. Furthermore, the rate of complications from voluntary vaccination could be lower than the old statistics would indicate. People at high risk of complications would be advised against getting vaccinated.
The menace of the recently vaccinated to the vulnerable didn't exist when almost all the former were young children who stayed at home, or military personnel on bases. Permitting voluntary vaccinations by millions of Americans could kill thousands absent a really big-time public education plan. That is a necessary to the success of your proposals.
Check out the Smallpox Apocalpyse article on Strategy Page: http://www.strategypage.com/strategypolitics/default.asp
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