In my gloomier moments, I have been reading about potential biological weapons that terrorists, or even the US Army, can use and smallpox seems to be among the popular candidates.
My question is: Is the vaccination I got for smallpox back in 1966 going to keep me covered in this situation?
Or should I just keep my long plummet into depression about the state of the world?
I don’t think any terrorists have the smallpox virus available. So far as I know, there are only two places where the virus still survives (in a lab); Moscow and Atlanta. It has been essentially eradicated from the planet.
Your vaccination should protect you. Exposure to the virus (through vaccination or actual illness) should confer a life-long immunity to the disease. But I don’t think it’s something about which you need to worry.
For those who have not been vaccinated, the threat would be pretty worrisome but again, I don’t think the terrorists can access any smallpox sample.
Disclaimer:IANA Doctor, Virologist, or Immunologist, so you will have to take what I say with a grain of salt.
I heard in a report on 20/20 that some vaccinations taken decades ago were losing their potency and that is might be wise revaccinate oneself if possible.
Ok, so currently it is impossible to get a smallpox vaccination because it is almost completely vanquished, but you say what if terrorists strike? The government still has a strand of the virus in the national vaults, in case one day a terrorist attacks with it they can make a vaccine from it.
Someone with more knowledge should be along soon.
The CDC has about 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine on hand. The rest of the world has about 45 million doses. The CDC has another 40 million doses on order, but the first of it won’t be delivered until 2004.
The Russians experimented with theirs on prisoners in Siberia. They developed a strain that was stronger and as
bibliophage reports we are woefully short on vaccine.
There was a scare about some of the prisoners being released and the world was in danger and then it just died down. I will not speculate on the possibilities of how Russia may have solved that problem.
Sorry to say that I disagree with several of your points. There is anecdotal evidence that when the USSR broke up, some Russian biowarfare guys got jobs in other countries and may have taken smallpox cultures with them. Smallpox vaccine is again being manufactured which is disturbing, considering it has been eradicated in the wild. There is much speculation about who might have access to smallpox now.
Also, re. vaccination, I’m pretty sure that those of us who were vaccinated have waned immunity. It may help us a little, but who knows.
I brought up this very topic several months (years?) ago. I’d read a newspaper blurb about a middle-eastern country (Iraq?) that was vaccinating all of its soldiers against smallpox, and I was basically told I was a paranoid chucklehead. In light of recent events, however, it doesn’t sound quite as far-fetched. If smallpox really wasn’t a threat, there’d be no reason for anyone to vaccinate.
I am an immunologist and I work with the vaccinia virus, which is the vaccine for smallpox. The answer to your question is that we don’t know. Based on what we do know, my guess is that you are resistant to the virus, but still possibly infectible. The larger issue is that no one born after 1970 in the U.S. was given the smallpox vaccine and is completely susceptible. Although there are probably better (better from the standpoint of those releasing them, obviously) viruses to use in biological warfare. Smallpox only spreads by direct contact, and would be a little limited in spread by that (especially because those that are infected are so obviously ill). However, I doubt VERY much that there are only these two samples of the virus.