No help for this on the CDC’s site. Nor elsewhere. So - I turn to The Great One or His minions to help. I read a few years ago of a debate in the world research community: seems there are only TWO samples of the smallpox virus left anywhere on earth, thanks to a world-wide effort to vaccinate virtually everyone. One sample is in a vault in Atlanta. One is in a vault in Moscow. The debate was whether to destroy these remaining samples or not. Pro: we always run the risk of infection as long as we have some of this stuff around, even though it’s secure. Con: we can learn about viruses and maybe even learn to eradicate them if we can have some of this smallpox stuff to experiment on. Once it’s extinct, we lose that option. Ok, now, they decided to put off the final decision for a few more years. But doesn’t that mean that the anxiety over a smallpox attack is baseless, because there really ISN’T any smallpox to attack with? Does Cecil know? Does anyone?
This is actually Jillgat’s territory, and I’m sure she’ll be along soon to explain to you the WHO criteria for declaring a disease “eradicated” (it doesn’t actually mean that the disease no longer exists).
Personally, I’m just damn glad we didn’t destroy the Western world’s stock of smallpox on schedule. The fact that we didn’t allows us to manufacture vaccine far more quickly than if we hadn’t retained those samples (we could still manufacture vaccine, it would just take a lot more time).
That’s basically the situation, as you’ve outlined it. However, the fear is that some of the Moscow virus may have been distributed to others (maybe sold by a poor Russian scientist to the Russian mafia, for example). I don’t really know how well founded these fears are.
It’s kind of like nuclear disarmament. We’d be safe if both sides destroyed the last stocks, but do we trust each other to do so?
More importantly, how do we confirm that there aren’t other secret stocks out there that we don’t know about? If we destroyed our stocks, and then were attacked with it, we’d have a harder time making the needed vaccines and coming up with new treatments.
Officially speaking, the only repositories of smallpox are supposed to be in Russia and the United States (Atlanta, to be exact–just a few miles from where I’m sitting!) However there is official concern that Russia might have supplied Iraq and North Korea with smallpox samples.
A few months ago there was a report on CBS’s 60 Minutes which talked about the development of biological weapons in Iraq. It seems that they not only were experimenting with a number of biological agents, including Anthrax, but this report mentioned that UN inspectors had actually found evidence of Iraq working with Smallpox.
How is this possible when supposedly there are only two samples of Smallpox still in existance (in Atlanta and in Moscow)? The report alluded to the fact that before the fall of the Soviet Union there was a secret campaign to develop biological weapons in the USSR (in defiance to an earlier treaty signed by many countries to ban the use of biological weapons). One former Soviet scientist who was interviewed went on to say that the Smallpox virus was “incubated” in raw eggs. He went onto say that when the Soviet Union collapsed, the security that was once very rigid fell into disarray. Apparently some samples of the Smallpox virus developed in these Soviet biological factories were smuggled and sold to Iraq and possibly even OBL.
I’m working on a cite for this televised report, since this is mostly from memory. I hope Jillgat will be able to supply you with more info on your question.
So - you’re saying that all this talk about a smallpox attack is based on the possiblity (rumor?) that someone hijacked some virus from Moscow, but we don’t know if this happened or not? Ok, I am going on record as saying that the fears of a smallpox attack are enormously out of proportion to the probability, or even possibility, of its occurence.
cc - I hope you are right but I’m not betting my life on it. A smallpox epidemic would be a disaster that would make the WTC attack look tame. It’s a virus, so antibiotics are useless and it’s contagious person-to-person.
That’s why the Feds are buying 300 million doses of the vaccine - enough to vaccinate the whole country. Once it is available, I will make sure my whole family gets it ASAP.
Keep your ears open for info about vaccination campaigns in Iraq - that would be a real tipoff.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but I just can’t get into that weeping polka-dotted, death-rattled look becoming the latest fashion.
You might be able to get some from the corpse of a long dead victim? About 1 in 1000 people have an adverse reaction to smallpox vaccine, of varying severity. I get a small pustule at the location of the vaccination, and I don’t consider this serious. I haven’t been vaccinated for 28 years, so I will get one when available.
Smallpox has never been considered ideal for warfare because in the past whole populations were vaccinated. And if they aren’t, as is the case now, there is no way to keep it from coming back and wiping out your population.
There are a number of anti-viral drugs, for example including those used to reduce the severity of chicken pox, that might be effective in alleviating smallpox. They are not cheap, and no one knows yet if they would work at all.
Actually, you don’t use smallpox to make smallpox vaccine. You use cowpox - a related but much less deadly virus. Unfortunately, there is no large stock of cowpox available. Making the vaccine used to involve infecting a lot of calves with cowpox then scraping the pus out of the resulting pox and using that as a vaccine. Yuuuuuuck. But it sure beats a case of smallpox.
Iraq has been vaccinating its army against smallpox for years now. Or so it has been reported. Now, are they vaccinating because they really have the virus, or as a way of making us think they have the virus?
There is a definite concern that, under artic permafrost, may be the bodies of smallpox victims in Alaska and the Canadian north that still contain viable virus. Of course, there is the problem of finding such bodies, getting them out of the permafrost, and getting the virus without inadvertantly destroying it.
Huh. I’ve heard it as 1 in 13,000, with about 1 in a million dying from complications of the vaccine.
That “small pustule” is actually the minimal reaction to the vaccine. If you don’t get that then the vaccine wasn’t potent.
An uncontained smallpox outbreak would be an unmitigated disaster. Anyone who is immunosuppressed would most likely die - either from the smallpox or from a high probably of bad reactions with the vaccine. This is not the way I’d like to see the HIV problem “solved”. The elderly and pregnant women would be especially hard hit. Typical smallpox has a 30% fatality rate, but some varieties have had fatalities of 50%. If truly uncontained it could sweep around the world - meaning between 2 and 4 billion dead, plus those left blinded or otherwise permanently damaged from the infection.
A “contained” outbreak would require the strictest quarantine of the affected area and all within it until all infection have run their course, followed by a hazmat clean up of all potential infectious waste. It would be a major epidemic episode, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Great Flu of 1918.
True, but it’s wise not to assume that nations or terrorist groups will act rationally. They may be aware of the risks to their own population and go ahead with such an attack anyway. The fact that Iraq and Al Qaeda have apparently made an effort to develop smallpox as a weapon indicates that they may be willing to use it, in spite of the risks.
Whether they have obtained smallpox, and whether they have the means to weaponize it, is of course another question entirely.