anthrax, schmanthrax. big deal. anthrax may be an ok germ for causing panic in people shaken by the reality of terrorism when they thought they were safe, but its not a good bio weapon. its not contagious, and its treatable with common antibiotic. smallpox is deadly, and the asinine policy decision to discontinue routine vaccinations has left all the world’s population under 30 years old vulnerable. the idea behind this decision was that people were more likely to suffer from side effects of the vaccine than to contract the disease from the environment. yeah, right. if everyone in the USA had been vaccinated, as many as 300 people in the last 30 years MIGHT have died from reactions to the vaccine. if smallpox is released in the USA by a terrorist, 25% of US population 30 years old and younger WILL die. thats the demonstrated natural history of the organism. what moron made up this policy??? ive been writing congressmen and CDC personnel and the president since my oldest son was getting baby shots and i realized that he was not allowed to receive the vaccine. my family has quietly, and not so quietly, laughed at me for 19 years. people in the USA have been so smug about terrorism. now its right in the front door, and the powers that be are like deer staring into the headlights. who out there seriously believes anything in the former soviet union is anything like safe? more like already sold to the highest bidder. that includes bio weapons, nukes…you name it. and, as much as he seems psychotic, do people really think bin laden is stupid? he has the money to get the germs, and the resources to make his own vaccine. as soon as his people are vaccinated, all hell-literally-will break loose. and still americans sit around discussing the ‘possibility’ of bio weapon attack…ok, i gotta stop before i have a stroke.
Just a question about smallpox vaccinations. Why do they leave that big-assed gawdawful scar?? What size needle do the USE anyway? Can’t they just put the stuff in a syringe?
with some diseases, youre immune from having them again after the first time. vaccinations take advantage of this, by giving you a miniature case of the disease. you get injected with a dead or damaged organism, so your body develops the immune response. but you dont develop the full-blown symptoms, because you didnt get exposed to the live organism. in the case of smallpox, the miniature case of the disease causes a scab, at most 2 centimeters, which then dries up and falls off leaving a scar. some people have said that immunity from a smallpox vaccination lasts only 10 years, but thats not the consensus. even after 20 years there is enough immunity that exposure to live organisms causes only a limited infection, much like the after effects of the original vaccination.
I’m not convinced that the previous mortality rate attributed to smallpox, assuming the 25% figure is correct, would be the same now, since presumably there have been some advances in medical care since the last reported cases of smallpox in the USA.
well, i admit it, there have been advances in anti-viral therapy in the last few years. however there are no cures for viral illnesses. and the 25% mortality for smallpox is NOT exaggerated. it is an extremely conservative estimate of the number of deaths. you must remember that people die from both the smallpox and from secondary infections to the massive skin wounds caused by smallpox. still not convinced? then tell me what percentage of people dying from a ravaging, physically disfiguring illness is acceptable to avoid one person in a million getting sick from the vaccine? i reiterate my initial point. ceasing the vaccination program for smallpox was a stupid and short-sighted decision, made by people blind to the threat of terrorist use of bioweapons.
You wrote “Typically 25 to 50 percent of victims die; survivors are permanently scarred and sometimes blind”, well I have to disagree.
In 1918 my father and his four siblings contracted small pox in the rural midwest. First of all they all survived and secondly none of them were scarred. I mean no scars, not a single one! Back in the 1950’s when my Dad had to travel to Mexico on business he was forced to take small pox vaccine, since he had no written proof that he had had this disease. He had no reaction what so ever to the vaccine, no welt and no scar.
Ofcourse many people are scarred and about one in ten die from this disease. But you were incorrect in your description and prognosis of this very contagious disease.
oh…one in ten…ten percent. lets suppose for a minute youre right. so what? we still should have been vaccinating people for smallpox. additionally, the statistics for morbidity and mortality cannot be extrapolated from a group as small as one family. any five individuals who are exposed could miss having the disease. that doesnt mean that 25% of all people who get smallpox dont die from it.
your comment appeared on the thread i started. i realize you werent specifically directing your comments to me, but the idea of a thread is that people read whats written and comment on it. i commented on your reply to cecil. if you prefer a personal conversation with cecil, perhaps you should email directly and not post on the message boards. or maybe you could add: “i dont want anyone to comment on what i post” that should do the trick.
There is an underlying ethical question that you seem to dismiss too easily. If we vaccinate the population for smallpox, we have every reason to believe that a number of people will die; maybe 300, it could be more or less, but certainly there will be some deaths. If we do not vaccinate, there is a chance thousands could die in the event of an attack, potentially millions if terrorists could perfectly pull off a massive airborne release over multiple cities. So essentially you are willing to kill 300 people (and remember potentially you or a relative could be one of those with a reaction) in exchange for removing one possible threat. If the threat is never realized, those people will have died for no reason.
Consider also that even if we immunize against smallpox, there are still other diseases that could be just as dangerous, so those 300 lives won’t necessarily be enough. The fact is, even if we get hit by a smallpox attack, we might still be able to administer the vaccine after the fact and still save the vast majority of the population. If I were a terrorist and had the resources to strike on a massive scale, smallpox would not be my first choice for that reason…
Perhaps you’re right, but the decision to condemn those people isn’t one to be taken lightly. The world has always been and will continue to be a dangerous place with threats of many different natures. It is a complicated balancing act to figure out which threats we can reasonably counter and which we can’t, which strategies are logical and which are only fearful reactions.
Sorry Doc, I did not understand. I thought I was just replying to Cecil’s column. The Straight Dope folks need to change the name of the link at the bottom of his column. It sounds like you are just replying to his column. I did not want to get in arguments with anyone, I have had enough discord already to last me a lifetime. Again I am sorry.
Stormy, I think we all appreciated hearing your anecdote. We’re an argumentative bunch here at the SDMB, but it’s (almost) always good-natured. There was nothing wrong with your post and you didn’t need to apologize.
I hope you stick around. We need more of that rural midwestern stock around here to compensate for the overabundance of city slickers.