What would Be the Reaction to A Smallpox Epidemic??

Great Debates
1

Over the past two months, the timidity and trepidation shown by Congress, the civil service, and the American public to anthrax and the possibility of renewed threats have made me wonder what would be the reaction to a major threat, like a widespread smallpox outbreak. The 9/11 disasters, horrible as they were, had only local damage. People in Cincinnati might be appalled at the WTC/Pentagon disasters, but the themselves were in no danger. However, a smallpox epidemic, would not be limited to one city, but would spread quickly, especailly if terrorists mailed virus-contaminated mail simultaneously to several cities.

Does the government have the capacity to calm the nation? Do the hospitals have the capacity to care for thousands of infected people? Would doctors, nurses, paramedics, and firefighters respond to the crisis, or would they stay back for fear of infection? How fast would the infection rate expand? Would the nation grind to a halt? How many would die? Would we use nukes in retaliation if it could be conclusively demonstrated the the infection was caused by a specific enemy nation?

2

Would the smallpox virus live long enough to infect anyone if it were mailed like anthrax?

3

Would veils and beauty patches come back into style, in a revival of 18th-century smallpox fashion?

(Is it possible I have worked in the fashion-mag industry too long?)

4

I’m not up on my virology, but there are instances in history of people being infected through contact with contaminated objects. I have no doubt that the bioweaponeers would find some effective vector of infection, like aerosolized virus in a subway ventilatiing system or a vapor bomb in a crowded area.

5

Here’s a link to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention FAQ on Smallpox
An aerosol version would last 1 or 2 days, according to the site. However, infected people remain capable of spreading the disease as long as they have sores.

6

I don’t know about the survivability of the smallpox virus, but I do know that during the Great Flu Epidemic, the flu is believed to have reached some remote communities via contaminated mail.

7

Smallpox infected blankets have worked in the past. I don’t see any reason that envelopes wouldn’t work as well.

8

Smallpox infected blankets have worked in the past. I don’t see any reason that envelopes wouldn’t work as well.

9

I do know that the only two locations that the Small Pox virus is supposedly kept is at the CDC and at the Russian equivalent of the CDC. However, with Russia being on such hard times, there is a suspicion that they may have sold it to other nations (I’ve heard Iraq does have it).

From my understanding, a small pox outbreak would be pretty devestating. No one has immunity to it any more, and lets not forget what it did to the people of South America when the Spaniards brought it over.

What scares me is that I’ve read that Russian scientists have successfully combined smallpox and Ebola. Basically creating a air-borne version of Ebola. I just hope that is one of those conspiracy type theories.

10

Cecil’s take on the smallpox blankets story.

11

Cecil doesn’t include this in his version.

From When plague strikes: the Black Death, smallpox, and AIDS, by James Cross Giblin, 1995, p.87:

(…story of Amherst’s plans to infect blankets)
Shortly thereafter, the colonel invited two Native American chiefs to the British camp…An officer who was present revealed the true purpose of the meeting in his diary. “Out of our regard for [the chiefs] we have them two blankets and handkerchiefs out of the smallpox hospital. I hope they will have the desired effect.”
It is not known for certain whether they did or not. But Native American resistance to the British and American forces weakened noticeably in the next few months…

12

Smallpox attacks might well kill thousands. However, it is once again a matter of effectiveness. As an tool of terror, perhaps it might suffice to so enrage America that a true American Jihad would begin. However, vaccination distribution is nearly in place already, and rapidly coming on line. In six months, the attack would kill only hundreds, perhaps only dozens.

We have a civilian health system highly capable of resisting biological attack, organic, or deliberate. Ebola and the Hanta are great fear symbols, but not great weapons.

Since the 16th of October, more people have been killed by the direct acts of doctors than the total number of people known to have contracted anthrax. The number of deaths caused by antibiotics is higher than the number of deaths from Anthrax.

Plague, Influenza, and the other recommended weapon bugs all have specific characteristics that make them difficult to spread. The use of suicide squads of willingly infected volunteers is still the most simply implemented. That one leaves a clear trail of dead bodies, going back to the perpetrators. There is little doubt that world opinion would insure the deaths of everyone involved in the attack, however futile it might be in real world terms.

Keep in mind, as well, that eventually, the groups involved in any sustained biological attack will incur friendly fire infections. A sudden outbreak of Smallpox in Iraq, happening right now would not evoke a sudden outpouring of sympathy and support from the west. The world intelligence community will certainly note the sudden implementation of mass vaccination against an otherwise uncommon pathogen of any sort.

It is theoretically possible that a wealthy nation could mount an attack on a poor nation using biological weapons, and have some assurance of gaining a significant victory. But against any wealthy nation, with a reasonably good health infrastructure, this type of attack is only capable of inflicting symbolic damage to a large population.

I believe the anthrax attacks have been perpetrated by some flavor of American Isolationist Hatemongers. These groups are the only ones I can see “benefiting” from the haphazard deaths of people which accomplishes no real change on the world political stage other than to encourage public outrage. That perpetrator group is unlikely to have access to smallpox. The Iraqi government already knows that they would be the prime suspects of any use of smallpox, and they have had recent experience with the likely consequences. It would be unbelievably stupid for them to become willing targets for weapons of mass destruction. (Which is our stated intended response to the use of Biological Weapons by another nation.)

Tris

“For there has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.” ~ Sun-tzu ~

13

I’m not an expert on the issue of the smallpox-laden blankets, and whether or not they are used, so i’ll leave that to others. I do want to add something, though.

I realise that i may be excommunicated from SDMB for calling Cecil’s investigative skills into question, but as genie points out he didn’t exactly use the latest research on the subject.

The historian cited by Cecil was Francis Parkman, author of many books dealing with early American westward expansion and contact between Europeans and Indians. He was a great scholar. But he has also been dead for over 100 years. Now, this alone does not make his work suspect, but it would be well to recognise that there has been a considerable growth in Native American studies over the past century, not to mention the emergence of a somewhat more, shall we say “enlightened” view of Indians and their cultures.

Just as importantly, various programs devoted to the collection of historical documents since 1900 mean that there is probably much more evidence available to modern scholars than was available to Parkman. A good example is the Department of Historical Research, created by the Carnegie Institution in 1905 and overseen by John Franklin Jameson for the next 23 years. (Jameson was the first person to be awarded a Ph.D. in history by an American University - Johns Hopkins, 1882) The Department devoted much of its time to collecting materials relevant to American history from foreign archives, governments and libraries. Add this to the effort of groups like the American Historical Association and various other scholarly and patriotic groups, and the sources available to the historian can be seen to have increased considerably over the past century.

Given that this is the case, we should not be too surprised if Parkman’s conclusions have been called into question, or updated.