Here’s the story-
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20021212/sc_nm/bush_smallpox_dc_9
I’m asking because I personally have not yet made up my mind. There are some risks to getting the shot, and there might be some serious risks to NOT getting the shot. Your decision will depend on how significant you perceive those risks to be.
So, are you going to get vaccinated for smallpox?
Thanks.
Well, since I already was vaccinated as a kid, I think I’d take my chances and not have another…especially since the jury’s still out on whether or not us older Boomers need to be revaccinated.
from the Yahoo news story that Surreal posted:
I’m in the Air Force, I expect it’ll be mandatory for me.
Not that I mind. I believe military personnel will be at greater risk of exposure than the general public. It makes sense.
No. While the risk of dying from the small pox vaccine is only one or two in a million I feel the risk of actually being exposed to smallpox is much smaller. When you follow the link also look at the article “Smallpox Vaccine Reactions Jolt Experts”. This vaccine is 40 years old and has side effects that would never be considered acceptable in a new vaccine. I think they should take all the new molecular genetics technology that’s been developed in the last 40 years and design a new vaccine. We know so much more now about the way viruses work that, given the necessary funding, they ought to be able to design a vaccine without so many side effects. If there was a new safer vaccine I would probably get vaccinated.
I work in a hospital, often with people with suppressed immune systems. We’ll see, but I may have to get one as part of my job. However, the issue has been raised that people with immune system difficulties may be able to contract some sort of cowpox-related disease from people who’ve recently been immunized (the site of the injection can be pus-filled, among other yucky potential side effects), so it comes down to what the hospital policy is.
Since I am in the “general public” I will decided in 2004 which is the soonest I am going to be able to get a vaccine anyway from the look of things. The benefit/risk evaluation may change a great deal in the next couple of years.
Question: as I was already vaccinated as a child and didn’t suffer and side-effects, does that mean if I get a booster I should also be OK? Not that I’m getting one, just curious . . .
Heck no.
As In Conceivable noted, who knows what the world will be like by the time it’s offered to folks like me. I guess I’ll decide then. But if it were offered tomorrow, I wouldn’t.
I think I was vaccinated as a child (I was born in '64), so I’m assuming that I wouldn’t need to get re-vaccinated anyway. Or does the vaccine wear off? And since I was vaccinated already, wouldn’t I be much safer receiving it again in '04?
So, really, the issue for me would be whether to have my kids vaccinated. Though recommendations may change greatly between now and when it’s available to the general public, right now my feeling is that I would get them vaccinated.
I was vaccinated in '72. I asked the nurse in our employee health division about it when I was getting my TB test, and she said that would only have protected me for 3 years or so. I would expect, but am not certain, that a vaccination done in the '60s would be similarly ineffective today.
I was vaccinated 14 years ago as part of a NIH AIDS vaccine study. I should call the folks at Vanderbilt to make sur ethat part of the vaccine was complete.
StG
Caveat - I am not an infectious disease specialist, nor am I a doctor or nurse. As far as I know I received only one smallpox vaccination, and do not know if a full series of some kind would confer lasting immunity, or if the vaccination type changed over those decades in which it was commonly in use.
I found a cite that has links to a lot of information about smallpox and the smallpox vaccines. It also has some pictures of people who have come down with smallpox, which are extremely graphic (WARNING!).
http://www.immunize.org/bioterror/smallpox.htm
I don’t see how anyone could see those photos and still feel comfortable NOT being vaccinated.
Ya know, I’m in the general public, which means that lots of people will be vaccinated before me. And as awful as this sounds, I going to base whether or not I get it on what happens to them, and what state the world is in at that point. If the vaccination itself is risky, but the world’s on the brink of huge biological warfare…yeah, I think I’ll get it!
Hell yes, and my kids are getting it, too. I think the odds of a severe reaction in healthy people are an acceptable risk, given what could happen should you actually contract the disease.
Er…is an acceptable risk.
I got vaccinated when I was young; I think the vaccine lasts about 5 years.
No one in the entire world has a case of smallpox today. There is a remote possibility that some rogue state or terrorist has somehow managed to obtain a sample of the virus, a further remote possibility that they will be able to use that as a terror weapon, and a further, even more remote possibility that such terroristic use will be anywhere near me. If you get the vaccination there is a remote possibility that you will die. So, right now, remote cubed > remote, no vaccination for me. When news gets out that someone in Yemen has died of smallpox, then, sign me up.
A recent news story said that Saddam Hussein may have obtained a vaccine-proof smallpox strain from a Russian scientist-
“A Central Intelligence Agency informant says the smallpox was brought to Iraq by a Russian scientist, Nelja Maltseva, who died two years ago. She is known to have visited Iraq in 1972. But now the CIA informant says she went back in 1990 to help Saddam’s bioterror experts.”
If this is accurate, then the question of whether or not to vaccinate becomes moot.
shelbo- “So, right now, remote cubed > remote, no vaccination for me.”
I see what you’re saying here, but unless we actually quantify each of our ‘remotes’, we can’t say for certain that the ‘remote’ < ‘remote cubed’.
Also, your analysis is equating dying from smallpox and dying from smallpox vaccine. I would think that dying from the vaccine would be a much quicker and easier death than dying from the disease itself.
But who knows?