Posted on 12/03/2002 4:37:57 PM PST by Heartlander2
One day after the British authorities announced a mass vaccination programme against smallpox, the USA, France and Canada has confirmed plans to carry out a large-scale inoculation project against the same disease.
Worried that their countries would not be prepared in the event of a bioterrorism attack, the governments of these countries have advanced contingency plans to carry out a vaccination programme. IN the UK, the British government is in negotiations with the pharmaceutical company Aventis, which will supply 10,000,000 doses of the vaccine. In France, the Health Ministry has confirmed that there are plans to inoculate the front-line health and emergency workers at short notice, while the whole population would be vaccinated within two weeks.
Meanwhile, in the USA, the Bush Administration plans to vaccinate a million front-line military personnel, in a first phase, while a further ten million workers (police, healthcare staff) would be inoculated in a second phase. In Canada there are also plans for a mass inoculation programme for front-line emergency workers.
The vaccine would later be available for people who wanted to be inoculated on a voluntary basis in the USA and the UK. The vaccination can cause serious side effects for those who already have weak immune systems and so it would not be advisable for the chronically ill. One to three people per million die from side effects of the vaccination.
However, the death rate from the disease, were a massive outbreak to occur, would be around 30% of those infected, while many others would suffer from lifelong complications such as blindness. The illness begins with fever, tiredness, and backache, symptoms not unlike those of influenza. A rash appears within 2 to 4 days and evolves from spots, firstly, to hard bumps, to blisters then to pustules and finally crusts, initially on the palms of hands and soles of feet, later spreading to the arms and legs and finally, all over the body.
It is not yet clear why the sudden rush has taken place in four separate countries, all of them pressing for vaccine for the same disease. Either an intelligence report has appeared confirming that something has gone missing from a laboratory or a warning has been made. To date, there is no official confirmation or denial of either option.
Give me the reasons why smallpox was eradicated.
Flag me when you get the 1922 figures. Until then, I'm not leaving my house.
Keep in mind, wisdom comes in later years...
It was only thanks to the previous vaccination efforts that that the rate of smallpox had declined to that level. Due to the erradication of naturally ocurring smallpox, achieved by ring vaccination around reported cases, efforts to develop safer vaccines for smallpox were abandoned. According to statistics recorded in 1968, virtually all the deaths or injuries caused by the smallpox vaccine occurred in people with compromised immune systems, people with eczema, or children under 10. At this point the vaccinations are strictly voluntary for civilians. The 500,000 emergency and health workers, and the 500,000 are healthy adults who are unlikely to have adverse reactions to the vaccine. Even if some of this group have some side effects, modern medicine has much more effective treatments for them than existed 30 years ago when routine smallpox vaccinations were stopped.
The more healthy people, who are low risk for complications from the smallpox vaccine, get vaccinated the greater the herd immunity to smallpox. This herd immunity will help protect those who are unvaccinated or can not tolerate the vaccine. The consequences of not having voluntary vaccination now, may be involuntary vaccination in the event of a smallpox attack. Also, the strain of smallpox used by the Russian biowarfare program had a fality rate of 50% in unvaccinated people who got the disease. It would be foolish not to be prepared for an attack.
It would be foolish to ignore prominent researchers that say vaccinations actually WEAKEN the immune system, for if it IS true, then we are in even worse shape if we DO vaccinate...
What's his take on the degree of residual immunity left for those of us who got our shots back when they were still giving them in the 50s and 60s?
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