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Experts Urge Mass Vaccination for Smallpox Attack (Watch Out)
Reuters ^ | Sun Jul 7 | By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

Posted on 07/07/2002 3:14:48 PM PDT by PatriotReporter

Experts Urge Mass Vaccination for Smallpox Attack

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mass vaccination would save thousands more lives in a smallpox attack than the current limited strategy that has been recommended to the U.S. government, experts said on Sunday.

In a study criticizing the limited vaccination plan, they recommended federal officials be ready to vaccinate millions of people.

"Mass vaccination really leads to fewer deaths than the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( news - web sites)) interim plan," Lawrence Wein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( news - web sites), who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.

Besides, he said, if there were a smallpox attack, "I think it highly likely that people would take to the streets to demand vaccination, or would flee," possibly spreading the disease even more widely.

Wein and Edward Kaplan of Yale University, both experts in modeling epidemics, published their study in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( news - web sites) and urged the CDC to change its current policy when it issues new guidelines later this year.

Smallpox, once a scourge that killed nearly a third of its victims and scarred the rest, was eradicated in 1979. But some countries, including Iraq and the former Soviet Union, experimented with the virus as a potential germ warfare agent.

Fearful of a smallpox attack, the U.S. government last year ordered millions of doses of smallpox vaccine -- enough, in the words of Health and Human Services ( news - web sites) Secretary Tommy Thompson, to vaccinate "every man, women and child" in the country.

PLANS FOR VACCINATING 500,000 REPORTED

Government advisers last month said a so-called ring vaccination strategy, which would involve finding and vaccinating people who had contact with an infected person, would probably be sufficient in case of an attack. More people could be vaccinated if this approach failed, they said.

They also recommended vaccinating potential first-line responders now as a precaution. On Sunday, The New York Times reported the federal government was planning to vaccinate 500,000 health care and emergency workers soon.

The newspaper quoted federal officials as saying the government was laying plans for a mass vaccination of the population, just in case.

But a U.S. Health and Human Services Department spokesman, Bill Pierce, told Reuters the exact number of those to be vaccinated had not yet been decided.

Pierce said these recommendations were very general and required more work by HHS and the Centers for Disease Control to identify which groups should be vaccinated.

The ring vaccination policy was used in the 1970s to eradicate the virus, which lives only in people, in the last few places where smallpox infection remained.

Kaplan said current policy is based in part on this past success.

"But it is one thing when ring containment means putting a ring around a village ... as opposed to trying to put a ring around New York City," Kaplan said in a telephone interview.

Kaplan and Wein ran a computer model of what would happen if someone used a smallpox weapon against a city of 10 million people. Kaplan told an advisory meeting on smallpox vaccine that an initial 1,000 infections could lead to 97,000 deaths.

SIDE-EFFECTS

Ring vaccination would lead to 4,000 more deaths than mass vaccination would, they predicted -- even taking into account a high rate of side effects from the vaccine.

"We tried to take into account the likely number of people that you would have running around tracing and vaccinating," Kaplan said in a telephone interview.

"What if you can't identify everybody?" People can be ill with smallpox and pass on the virus before they develop the distinctive blisters, Kaplan pointed out. "The disease doesn't stand still and wait for you to intervene."

Since vaccination was scrapped in the United States in 1972, experts assume almost no one has any real immunity any more. This means smallpox, which is highly infectious, could spread like wildfire through the population.

But the current vaccine is based on old technology and is not considered very safe. It has a high rate of side-effects, some of them deadly.

In addition, more people have suppressed immune systems now than in the 1970s, and they could be at special risk not only from the vaccine, but from people recently immunized with it.

Such people include cancer patients being treated with chemotherapy and people infected with the AIDS ( news - web sites) virus.

The current CDC policy, endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices last month, takes this into account. It calls for quarantining anyone confirmed to have been infected in a smallpox attack.

Anyone who may have had contact with the infected patients would be tracked down and vaccinated


TOPICS: Breaking News; Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: biowarfare; vaccination
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To: cake_crumb
Voluntary vaccinations ARE open to the public.

Can you cite where and when the public can get the smallpox vaccine ??

41 posted on 07/07/2002 6:58:43 PM PDT by Centurion2000
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To: Bommer
Yes, this would be my first question to ALL FReepers, government types, and Doctors:

What is the threat of smallpox right now?

Wasn't it eradicated 20-something years ago?

Were you (government types and the medical profession) wrong then?

Why aren't we being alerted as to it being "out there" when for 20 years we were told it was gone forever?

Tell us the FACTS. Is, in fact, the eradicated disease smallpox not eradicated?

Are there reliable reports or intelligence that someone BESIDES the CDC and the Russians have live smallpox? If so, why haven't we made the world aware by bringing it to the UN and asking for an immediate declaration of war? Wouldn't it be a lot more inportant than Saddam not allowing inspectors in? Surely the Third-worlders in the UN have the MOST to fear from smallpox being resurrected?

At least, come clean. What do you know, and when did you know it?

42 posted on 07/07/2002 6:59:18 PM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: cake_crumb
Look...if you were a terrorist, looking to infect a large population with smallpox...a population, I might add, which might be largly immune to the bacterium

Smallpox is a virus.

43 posted on 07/07/2002 6:59:51 PM PDT by Centurion2000
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To: Bommer
thanks for the info, B.
44 posted on 07/07/2002 7:10:44 PM PDT by tomkat
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Comment #45 Removed by Moderator

To: Carry_Okie
First, I haven't stated any "facts" other than that DynPort has the contract to produce the vaccine.

You said monopoly and mentioned the way they procured said monopoly.

46 posted on 07/07/2002 7:25:38 PM PDT by tallhappy
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To: Alas Babylon!
There are believed to be no more humans in the whole world infected with the stuff - that's what is meant by "eradicated." However several laboratories still have stocks of the germ.
47 posted on 07/07/2002 7:25:47 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
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To: Carry_Okie
Just trying to understand what you are talking about.

I still don't but am glad to see you backing off talk of monoplies and the like.

48 posted on 07/07/2002 7:28:30 PM PDT by tallhappy
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To: HiTech RedNeck
Well, see, that's my point. Several laboratories? I was led to believe that only two laboratories in the world had live smallpox; the CDC and the Soviets/Russians somewhere. Now it's several? What OTHER labs have been identified? If there are more than the two I've mentioned, that should be a huge cause for concern for the entire world, as this was NOT what we were being told.
49 posted on 07/07/2002 7:39:47 PM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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To: Alas Babylon!
It ceased being a naturally occurring disease a couple decades ago.

But viral stock was retained, officially in the US and Russia (USSR).

Other nations could have kept stock or materials that can act as seed -- ie scabs, blankets or other items from afflicted.

Soviets are supposed to have grown gallaons and gallons of viral containing broth and weaponized it.

The concern is over who else may have.

50 posted on 07/07/2002 7:46:01 PM PDT by tallhappy
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To: Squantos
Si.
51 posted on 07/07/2002 7:56:22 PM PDT by First_Salute
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To: Bommer
Israel is better prepared than we are. If Saddam Hussein tried to attack Israel with smallpox, he would solve the Palestinian problem.

52 posted on 07/07/2002 8:07:45 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
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To: Freedom4US
The last I recall being vaccinated was at Travis AFB in '67 just prior to being jetted to Thon Son Nhut (Saigon). I remember they stopped vaccinating soon after that. I might be wrong tho'.

Nam Vet

53 posted on 07/07/2002 8:11:06 PM PDT by Nam Vet
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To: PatriotReporter
In addition, more people have suppressed immune systems now than in the 1970s, and they could be at special risk not only from the vaccine, but from people recently immunized with it.

There it is, people. The reason we don't start vaccinating. Because it just wouldn't be fair to the homos and druggies with AIDS.

54 posted on 07/07/2002 8:14:17 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
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To: cake_crumb
New Hampshire Flag - "Live Free Or Die"Actually, smallpox vaccinations are not available to the public. I have tried with two doctors to get revaccinated. I had the vaccination as a small child and again when I served in the military. My last vaccination is over 30 years old and no longer effective according to competent medical authority. The docs; 1.) have been fully indroctrinated in the CDC view of things, and , 2.) do not have access to the vaccine. The Federales apparently control the vaccine and only the privileged few will be allowed access to it. I prefer a free market approach in which I can voluntarily request and pay for a vaccination. That is not one of the current options insofar as I have been able to determine.
55 posted on 07/07/2002 8:19:32 PM PDT by Old Airplane Driver
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To: PatriotReporter
One of every dozen U.S. children and teenagers -- 5.2 million -- has a physical or mental disability, according to new figures from the 2000 Census that reflect sharp growth in the nation's young handicapped population over the past decade.

Read beyond the headlines -- a great number of those "handicapped" children are ADD -- a highly subjective diagnoses most often used by schools to control kids who are hyper for any number of reasons, which most often include parental neglect.

56 posted on 07/07/2002 8:30:04 PM PDT by browardchad
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To: PatriotReporter
Here's a link to Donald Henderson's (and others) analysis of the problem in 1999, well before they were advising the Administration and before 9/11 made this seem realistic.
57 posted on 07/07/2002 8:36:28 PM PDT by Jim Noble
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To: Alas Babylon!
What is the threat of smallpox right now?

Wasn't it eradicated 20-something years ago?

The last case naturally occurring case of the major strain, which is more lethal, was documented in Bangladesh in 1976. The last case of the minor strain, which my grandmother is believed to have contracted when she was a girl, happened in Somalia in 1977. A worker in a laboratory in England was accidentally and fatally infected due to poor safety procedures in 1978. The World Health Organization declared smallpox erradicated in 1980.

The Soviet Union then scaled up their massive program to make smallpox into a weapon of mass destruction. They had the capability to store up to 20 tons of the virus! They had special re-entry vehicles designed to allow delivery via ICBM's. They had special ICBM bases located in the arctic circle in order to maximize the storage time of the virus in their silos. Also, the smallpox variety used in their biolgical weapons program was not the ordinary run of the mill variety. It was a strain from India collected in 1967 that is extremely virulent with mortality rates near 50% rather than the 30% you may have heard about. I don't see why we should assume that some starving ex-Soviet scientists might be tempted to steal a few micrograms of the virus. Considering the huge quantities of smallpox that the Soviets manufacutred, a few grams would be easy to miss. I could imagine that some of the Soviet scientists would be tempted to sell samples of the virus and their expertise to dictators like Saddam Hussein.

If you want to read a good book on this subject, I recommened:

Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox.

It is rated at 5 stars on Amazon.com.

58 posted on 07/07/2002 8:37:24 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
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To: All
Good smallpox information is available HERE-begin top of page.
59 posted on 07/07/2002 8:47:01 PM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
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To: browardchad; PatriotReporter
'One of every dozen U.S. children and teenagers -- 5.2 million -- has a physical or mental disability, according to new figures from the 2000 Census that reflect sharp growth in the nation's young handicapped population over the past decade.'

Read beyond the headlines -- a great number of those "handicapped" children are ADD -- a highly subjective diagnoses most often used by schools to control kids who are hyper for any number of reasons, which most often include parental neglect.

The reason that the numbers of "handicapped" children has increase is due to government funding. Parents and school districts are eligible to receive federal government funds for children who are labelled as "handicapped." It doesn't take a degree in economics to understand why there has been such a dramatic increase in the number of reported "handicapped" children.

60 posted on 07/07/2002 9:05:46 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
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