If You Thought Anthrax Was Bad...

It'll be the rich, powerful, and military that get vaccinated first, then Doc's, police, and firemen. If you don't fall into any of those categories, don't plan on getting a vaccination.

Misconception here: Mass inoculation is not necessary to contain a smallpox outbreak. Isolating the cases and contacts, then inoculating the immediate circle should do just fine.

Thanks for the heads up!

Assuming, you can contain and isolate yes, but in the event of an epidemic, such as contagious terrorist at an airport, the breakdown of who get the vaccination, and in what order is correct.

Feasible or not,the threat of Bioterror is frightening.

It's not bubonic plague that is of concern to bioterrorism experts, but the highly contagious pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague is caused by the same bacterium -- Yersinia pestis -- but the reason why pneumonic plague is dreaded by the experts is because of two characteristics: the ability to spread very rapidly in the population and a very high rate of lethality.

Just like inhalation anthrax, people who begin exhibiting symptoms of pneumonic plague have a very poor prognosis, even with vigorous treatment. It's thought that the prognosis for survival is much worse than inhalation anthrax. Most of the information I've found states that the mortality rate is 100% if not treated within the first 24 hours. Pneumonic plague is highly transmissible person-to-person and can spread quite rapidly thoughout a population. It is spread by uncontrollable coughing, which serves to spread the bacillus in tiny sputum droplets through the air. When plague bacillus is inhaled into the lungs through bioterrorism, it becomes systemic and affects the lungs and other vital body organs. Pneumonic plague symptoms include cough, bloody sputum, chest pain and difficulty breathing. It has an incubation period of 1-7 days.

All in all, inhalation anthrax is a cakewalk compared to what pneumonic plague would be. We're talking about 3 to 4 weeks of strict quarantine after a person is diagnosed. If nothing else, it would be a nightmare in terms of our public health care systems' ability to respond to any outbreak that would occur.

The good news is that since the symptoms are very similar to inhalation anthrax, physicians and nurses are now much more likely to become suspicious of anything that resembles anthrax. Hopefully, our frontline medical workers would spot the disease early enough to stop the death rate from becoming very high. Like the anthrax, people who've been exposed can begin prompt prophylactic treatment with antibiotics (Streptomycin, if I remember correctly.)

So true. Terror is the desired result.