Doctors Blast Feds' Smallpox Plan

NewsMax ^ | 9/26/02 | Limbacher

[eno_]

You mean you haven't seen the new General Dynamics ads: "Trident kills anthrax dead."

At 24 MIRVed Tridents per boat, it wouldn't even take 1/3rd of the fleet to erase Islam from the face of the Earth in an hour.

[Jim Noble]

Ok, here's my (slightly) well-informed comment:

The only reason to vaccinate doctors and nurses now is that it is a necessary war measure (I agree that it is).

That being the case, "peacetime" ideas of risk don't count. The latest from the top is that they want all of us vaccinees to take three weeks off (as if such a thing were possible) because of the remote possibility that a patient with unsuspected immune deficiency would be infected by vaccinia from a doctor or a nurse.

At no time when vaccination was routine did vaccinees take five minutes off, much less three weeks. This absurdly inflated risk scenario is not apposite to the task-if we are at risk of attack, and if the risk is so great that we need to preemptively immunize the front line doctors (me, for example), then creating scenarios to eliminate any risk is inappropriate.

And, yes, I think you all should get it also.

[eno_]

Your analysis would be solid but for one thing: AIDS patients are a special protected class now. That would explain the three weeks off at least as well as confusion over what is the actual threat.