Posted on 11/20/2002 9:40:24 PM PST by chance33_98
Bandage Cost Concerns With Smallpox Vaccinations
Bandage Cost Concerns With Smallpox Vaccinations
Reporter: Silvia Castaneda
A terrorist attack involving smallpox is a real threat, but the biggest hurdle in developing a vaccination plan is not the cost - it's the bandages.
Tricia Mewbourne went to Vanderbilt Medical Center to get a bandage change. She has a sore on her arm from the smallpox vaccine.
"You see the seepage and you wonder whether it's going outside," Tricia said.
The "it" she was talking about is the live virus in the vaccine. If the virus were to escape from her arm and expose others: "Certain individuals can get fairly ill and even die from this virus."
So Tricia and other Vanderbilt study volunteers are having sores kept under double wraps, using two bandages. Bandages are changed every three days for a few weeks. Each change costs a dollar, so in a mass vaccination situation: "If you multiply that by hundreds of thousands or several thousand individuals, it could be very costly," said Dr. Tom Talbot.
And if most of the state would have to be vaccinated, the bandage cost would be in the millions. But there's no plan right now on who'd pick up that cost. It could fall on strapped local governments.
"We are not stockpiling bandages at this time, " said Dr. Allen Craig.
State Health Department epidemiologist Dr. Allen Craig said it's too early to do that, not only because of cost, but because the federal government hasn't figured out what bandage may protect best. However, if millions of bandages would be needed in a hurry, Dr. Craig said cost wouldn't be a factor.
"We will be able to pick up the cost using federal or state dollars if we need to."
In the meantime, Vanderbilt researchers said they want to test different types of bandages to see whether the cheap ones, like gauze ones that cost just a couple of cents, could protect as well as the costly ones.
Some did.
However, we have a more vulnerable population now in that we have a couple generations of immunodeficient chidren who survived and grew up into adulthood ONLY because antibiotics were discovered and helped them survive.
And we have a population of people taking steroids for asthma and COPD, and cancer chemotherapy, and organ transplant recipients. These therapies didn't exist back then and these people would have died of their primary disease.
Finally, one got vaccinated in childhood when the immune system was at its peak and able to respond at maximum to the attenuated virus entering the system. A lot of the people we are going to vaccinate are adults now, who will have a higher rate of ill effects. For the same reason that chicken pox is a more serious disease in adulthood than childhood, it is riskier to vaccinate older people. Remember Patsy Mink?
Thus a higher percentage of people now will be at risk for greater problems than was true in the past.
This is a reality we have to try to cope with and try to minimize as best we can.
The absurd hysterics, on FR, about smallpox vacinations, has been going on for a rather long time now. The lies, 1/2 truths, and misinformation, has been astounding !
It isn't " confusion " at all; it's a bunch of gu;;ible, overtly paranoid, the world has to be PERFECT dupes, who are " confused ". The rest of us ar just fine ! :-)
Is the risk to theses vulnerable people any more from a smallpox vaccination than say a flu or pneumonia inoculation?
Childhood diseases are always and have always been worse in adults, than in children. Lord Byron died from measles. Male adutls, who got the mumps, were made sterile. What is forgotten, or unknown, in all of this hysertia, is that children used to die / be maimed, from all sorts of things, which people, in the USA, no longer get. All of us, children AND adults, now get strange illnesses, because people now live longer and don't get things like whopping cough, measles, mumps, etc. !
Off the top of my head I would say the risk will be ten times greater at least.
That the U.S. and Britain are doing this in spite of the risks indicates a very grave concern that outweighs the inevitable deaths and disabilities from this vaccine.
Like I said before, I believe they know something they haven't told us about what Saddam has in his medicine chest. And I believe they have known this for a year or more, but haven't been able to level with us because they had to get the pieces in place for the chess game of our lives...wizard chess, if you will, where people die.
And all the liberals complaining that the President hasn't asked us to make sacrifices for the war effort. They mean forego the tax cut. But the sacrifices are actually ahead of us and will be great for some families, so there is no need to create artificial sacrifices now.
Sorry PR, I probably used the wrong term to describe the fact that the vaccine virus is not a virus that is harmful to humans. Even though it is indeed a live form and not dead. With that in mind, one would have to be slightly paranoid to believe that it would cause damage by junping from the vaccinated to someone else.
According to CDC records, the people who actually died as a result of the old style innoculaions were estimated at between 1 and 2 per million vaccinations. I don't doubt that carefull screening would almost all but eliminate that number.
They also have and are creating the imuno-globulin antidote for those who have bad reactions.
The stuff in not totally safe, as most all vaccines. But, it would be a no brainer to get it if we have a major outbreak. The only reason this bandaid crap came up is the protection of imuno-deficient people from recently vaccinated ones. A real major worry that is only for people that worry about potential hazards that raely, if ever, would occur.
Like raining cats and dogs.
You bet I am sick and tired of people trying to stir up this garbage. I know that it won't stop. It's just that FR used to be filled with more people, who didn't get appoplectic about what are assumptions.
Will the Dems use smallpox vacinations ( whether given or not ) against the president ? OF COURSE THE SHALL ! They use the fact that heh's breathing, against him.
No one appears confused to me except maybe you.
The whole point of this is that if you have full blown aids or another imuno compromise, you need to stay away from physical contact with recently vaccinated people or you run a slight risk of contracting the vaccination through contact.
That is it and that is all of it.
People may be living longer but they sure as hell are not any smarter. I think I have had every damned inoculation devised by man from childhood through the adult years of traveling to some of the most disease ridden cesspools on earth. In all that time I have never once given it a second thought. There is only one question a person has to ask themselves and that is...is the risk of a vaccination greater than the risk of contracting the disease, especially if that disease is being used as a weapon. Everything else is just navel gazing and, as you said, agenda driven hype..
No, one would not be paranoid, one would simply have a medical degree.
patriciaruth, M.D.
I know you are a med proffesional. I also know that the CDC is just covering all the potentials of a mass vaccination.
The trouble is that these findings are mis-interpreted by many and they are fearfull. This particular warning about band-aids is the tip of the iceberg.
The fact is, that if we were actually attacked with the virus, the mounting death toll would greatly and quickly overtake the petty fears. These same people would be pushing and shoving other people out of line to get their vaccinations.
I don't remember any of us even wearing bandaids after the first day.
Of course, that was almost 40 years ago.
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