Smallpox Apocalypse

The Strategy Page ^ | July 22, 2002 | Tom Holsinger

[spycatcher]

Smallpox Apocalypse
by Tom Holsinger
July 22, 2002

A major smallpox attack on America would spiral overseas into the greatest catastrophe in history unless we resume preventive vaccinations. The epidemic would probably kill a tenth of the human race.

This is, fortunately, unlikely as the perpetrators would gain nothing. America would suffer among the least, while Muslim countries would suffer among the most. Terrorist states and extremist Islam will be annihilated, and not merely at American hands.

Smallpox is violently contagious with an unvaccinated 30% fatality rate. Survivors are disfigured. We have just enough vaccine for all Americans, Mexicans and Canadians. Perhaps one in a million will die from vaccination, while more will be disabled. Newer vaccines are safer. Rapid production of less effective vaccine using raw cowpox might be possible, but distribution in undeveloped countries during a world epidemic is problematic.

Last ditch protection is "variolation" - deliberately infecting people with smallpox pus - to create a less dangerous form of smallpox. This kills 1-2 per hundred. Speedy variolation of whole populations requires many existing victims plus great social discipline, and is least likely to work in undeveloped countries most in need of it.

The immune-impaired are far more vulnerable to infection but cannot be safely vaccinated. All infected will die.

Terrorists could start a smallpox epidemic here, without suicide volunteers, if Iraq helps or they obtain xSoviet smallpox. Weaponized smallpox powder reportedly drifted from an abandoned xSoviet biowar facility to infect the crew of a fishing vessel passing downwind. The unvaccinated crew died while all the vaccinated contracted smallpox, but survived. Smallpox powder is the nightmare scenario.

The best defense is mass pre-attack vaccination because the attack wouldn't happen due to being obviously futile. Voluntary pre-attack vaccination of just 10-15% of adults would vastly facilitate post-attack inoculation of everyone else. The vaccinated could maintain order and essential services while the unvaccinated hide in their homes pending inoculation.

The federal health establishment opposes even voluntary vaccination, contending it would kill too many people. Some other agenda is clearly involved given that the whooping cough vaccine mandatory for infants is as dangerous as existing smallpox vaccine.

That agenda is denial. They've spent their whole lives trying to eradicate smallpox, and can't adjust to 9/11. Obstructing vaccination lets them continue to deny that their life's work was wasted. Their institutional cultures and individual agendas mean they'll come up with other reasons against voluntary inoculation with emerging safer vaccines, and obstruct orders to permit it.

President Bush will have to spend too much of his time making a balky bureaucracy obey. Voluntary vaccination can only work if implementation responsibility is taken from federal health authorities, possibly by delegation to the states with funding. That would require Presidential involvement only once.

But the nightmare could start before then. Federal planners, excepting FEMA's Office of Emergency Preparedness, are clueless about public behavior in emergencies. They assume, as in Cold War plans, that people will act normally during the apocalypse instead of fleeing to the hills in panic, all without needing food, fuel, etc. Comical examples exist.

Post-attack inoculation will be additionally disrupted by 50+ million Mexicans surging here seeking vaccine not available in Mexico. That would magnify America's own panic, violence and collapsing civil infrastructure. All this is ignored so the federal health establishment can pretend their plan will work.

Worse, knowledge that they made the epidemic possible by obstructing pre-attack vaccination, repeated displays of politically correct federal stupidity concerning terrorism, and the arrival of millions of perceived infected Mexicans, will shatter public confidence. Americans will feel they must save themselves in defiance of a government whose incompetence caused the disaster. This is a prescription for chaos.

Fortunately the federal government is not our only government. State and local governments have always been our bulwark against disasters, and smallpox will be no exception. Additionally the American people will spontaneously organize themselves - consider Flight 93. We'll muddle through somehow, at higher cost, because we have enough vaccine, even for Mexico.

The rest of the world won't be so lucky. A significant outbreak here would unavoidably spread, including to countries where it would be unstoppable for lack of vaccine and social cohesion.

The leading disaster area will be sub-Saharan Africa due to AIDS. At least half its 500 million people will die. 10-15% fatalities of the 1.7 billion in India, Pakistan and the Arab world is not unreasonable. These areas' probable fatalities total 400-500 million, so 100-200 million more fatalities among the world's other 3.9 billion, mostly in Southeast Asia and South America, make 10% total smallpox fatalities worldwide quite possible. Most American dead - several million is reasonable if it starts here - will be immune-impaired, assuming most of the latter avoid infection. They might not.

There'd be hundreds million more dead from secondary causes - social collapse, genocidal nuclear attack on terrorist states, etc. The economic consequences would be ghastly. Most of the world participates in the money economy, unlike the 1930's, so the worst and longest depression in history would start.

Social effects would be awful too, notably here. Watching millions of us die horribly, with more millions disfigured, will scar America's psyche and self-image. Civil liberties and immigration would be savagely affected. Almost all Muslim immigrants would be deported - some would be lynched.

The American people will have a reckoning with Washington for wrecking the country by giving its games priority over our survival. Few in Congress will be re-elected, and President Bush would likely be removed earlier for "failure to perform his office".

Worse, public rage at all things federal would make significant Constitutional changes quite possible. Even an all-new Congress might not be trusted to propose suitable amendments. This could result in the states calling a second Constitutional Convention.

We might not be Americans afterwards, which would be terrorism's ultimate victory. The Bush Administration risks America's future by not letting us volunteer for smallpox vaccinations.

But that has its own risks. Next: DOING IT TO OURSELVES - Vaccination and the Immune-Impaired.

Tom Holsinger is a California attorney and wargaming grognard. He began writing for Strategy Page in April 2002 when Jim Dunnigan asked him to rewrite an email for publication.

[EternalHope]

From his standpoint, it's not insane to threaten to bring the house down if we take him out -- as Bush has now promised to do. In principle, this is no different from the MAD policy which the nuclear powers have subscribed to for decades.

Agreed. It seems beyond rational dispute that Saddam was behind the anthrax attack, and that he has pre-positioned assets with the ability to inflict mass casualties whenever he says "go". (Some of these people probably do not even know Saddam is the one pulling their strings.)

It also seems beyond rational dispute that we have been explicitly threatened with anthrax if we attack Saddam. He has claimed the ability to use lots of other weapons as well, but anthrax is the only weapon of mass destruction he has proven he can use against us.

To ask a related question: Is Saddam insane? The answer plays a big part in determining the best way to proceed against him.

By civilized standards, Saddam is a homicidal maniac suffering from delusions of grandeur. In other words, he is quite insane.

In spite of this, he is capable of rational thought and certainly interested in his own self-preservation. Hence, when we plan our moves, we need to consider how a homicidal maniac who wants to stay alive will respond.

Fortunately for us, he thinks he is much smarter than he actually is. Also fortunately, he kills his smartest aides as a matter of self defense.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

...t is time the American people stop living in denial and face up to the harsh reality of the world we are now living in...

Yes. We are 100% in agreement on that.

It is time for Americans to acknowledge that none of the absurd fear scenarios promoted by the Spook-Media Complex are true. They made them up, to advance their own agendas. The cyanide in the water, the terrorist cells, the anthrax/smallpox /suitcase nukes and all the rest of it. I wish I had the time to catalogue the literally thousands of Fear Threads that have been posted on FR, but I don't. No-one has that much time. It's been a dream run for the professional alarmists, they've made a lot of money and got their budgets and personnel numbers expanded just the way they wanted. Quite similar, to the Y2K scammers. Good luck to 'em, there's a sucker born every minute. But after the last six months of self-indulgence by way too many Americans (and quite a few Aussies) it is now time for everyone to grow up and stop using the fantasy that they're in some kind of personal risk as an attention-getting device. Mr President, show a bit of real leadership. Bring closure, to 911. Cancel the totally unjustifiable planned attack on Iraq, which will do nothing more than re-energise the international Left. Stop the erosion of rights and the attacks on the Constitution by the spooks and the bureaucrats. And lastly, get America back to business.

[MinorityRepublican]

Believe it or not, in the US the majority of Arabs are Christian, and the majority of Muslims are black.

Not surprising, in fact one of my good friends is an Arab Christian. However, the problem is that all the crazy Arabs are Islamic Fundamentalists, so that makes the Christians look bad even though they are no way responsible for the scourge of terrorism today.

[Thud]

Here's a source:

www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/smallpox/vaccine.shtml

"In 1939, British scientist Allan Downie discovered that the smallpox vaccine widely in use was not cowpox as everyone had thought, but another type of 'orthopoxvirus'. It came to be called vaccinia virus. The origin of this virus, and whether it had been accidentally created in the laboratory or had existed in nature, is unknown."

[Sabertooth]

See #65... does that ring true to you?

[Paleo Conservative]

I was not aware that Saddam's goals were religious. The man is an admirer of Stalin, after all.

Do you mean that Communism isn't a religion?

[aristeides]

I don't think it's the Communist in Stalin that Saddam admires (to the extent that Stalin can even be called a Communist, in any quasireligious sense.)

[Paleo Conservative]

'Smallpox can't be triggered by the vaccine, since it's cowpox.'

Smallpox vaccine is not based on cowpox.

Dictionary.com vaccine

Edward Jenner (1749-1823)

Sabertooth is correct. The word "vaccine" comes from the Latin word vacca meaning cow. Jenner coined the term "vaccination" to describe his method of infecting humans with the safer cowpox pathogen to induce immunity to smallpox. Later the term "vaccination" was broadended to include protection against other diseases.

[Paleo Conservative]

Here's the article you posted. The bold emphasis is mine.

Lawrence J. Joyce, LLC

A Limited Liability Company owned by
Lawrence J. Joyce
Pharmacist/Attorney-at-Law

germwarfarebook@aol.com

11/21/01

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson
hhsmail@os.dhhs.gov
FAX: 202.690.7203

cc:
President George W. Bush
president@whitehouse.gov

BY EMAIL AND FAX

Dear Mr. Secretary:

Allow me please to take a moment of your time to explain why I have called a press conference in which I call upon you to make some doses of the stockpile of smallpox vaccine available to certain workers in the transportation and related industries now during the holiday travel season. I wish to elaborate on the points on which I am quoted in this week’s issue of Insight magazine
(Nov. 26th issue, pp. 24-25).

Allow me to briefly state my background. I am a pharmacist and an attorney. I am a registered pharmacist in the States of Arizona, California, and Illinois. I am a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the State of Arizona, the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois, and the Supreme Court of the United States. As a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP) I
was privileged to participate in a tour of the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds Biological Warfare Unit in August of 1996. DDP is a private organization of doctors and researchers who advocate civil defense. Its luminaries include Dr. Jane Orient, President of the Academy of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Edward Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb, Dr. Robert Jastrow, Director of Mt. Wilson Observatory, and Dr. Martin Kamin, the discoverer of carbon-14. Its web site is http://www.oism.org/ddp.

Upon returning from Dugway I did some further research into the topic of germ warfare, and later that same year began publishing my findings in my book, LESSONS FROM DUGWAY: What I Learned About Surviving Germ Warfare At The U.S. Army Proving Grounds. My web site is: http://www.germwarfarebook.com.

A terrorist, of course, needs a large percentage of unvaccinated workers in the transportation and tourist industries in order to conduct a smallpox attack near its theoretically most efficient level. Accordingly, I ask you to make available at least some of the stockpiled doses of smallpox vaccine to persons in those industries who have never had a smallpox vaccination in their entire lives. In addition, I would suggest that persons working in those fields who received a smallpox vaccine early on in life be tested to determine what their titer of antibodies against smallpox is in order to ascertain whether they would need booster shots now.

In saying this I note that, according to an Israeli Defense Forces study, persons who received smallpox booster shots as a child might still have some protection for thirty years, and possibly longer. (El-Ad B. The persistence of neutralizing antibodies after revaccination against smallpox. The Journal of Infectious Diseases 1990;161:446-448.) Consequently, we might not even have to release enough doses to vaccinate everyone in those industries in order to have 100% coverage. And some of those who were vaccinated during childhood might only require diluted booster shots to be protected. Thus, we might not have to tap into a large amount of the stockpile in order to frustrate the terrorists.

Releasing the stockpile of smallpox vaccine after an attack has started is not enough because smallpox, I would remind you, has about a 12-day incubation period, and can take up to three weeks to produce symptoms. Consequently, tens of millions of people could be infected before the government even starts to respond. Vaccinating persons working in the airline, trucking, tourism, and related industries, by contrast, could at least partially inhibit the spread of the disease.

If persons working in those industries were well-prepared with vaccinations, we might actually prevent some attacks, because then the terrorists would not be able to accomplish even a fraction of what they want. That's the main difference between my approach and the present posture of this administration. This current approach doesn't deter an attack. It only tries to limit the damage after the attack has taken place. But I say that an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure.

God bless the United States of America.

A copy of the press release follows this text.

Sincerely yours,

Lawrence J. Joyce

[Thud]

Go here now!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/722390/posts

Decision on Smallpox Shots Seen in Days

[bonesmccoy]

Not sure which posting you are referring to... the message you wrote was post 65. Did you mean post 64?

[Sabertooth]

Yeah, sorry... #64.

[bonesmccoy]

The distinction you are drawing is probably irrelevant. The issue is the level of similarity in the coating of the virus. Without giving you a lecture on viral molecular biology, the similarity between small pox and vaccinia is likely related to similarity in the coating surrounding the two viruses.

Your comments are really timely given the recent publication of a scientific paper where the researchers created a functional polio virus from published gene sequences. The publication was misguided and alot like publishing nuclear weapon blueprints. Our National Academy of Sciences should have had more insight.

Your concern that a vaccine may not function well against bioweapons is valid, but it is wiser to vaccinate against known viruses than to simply ignore the threat.

[Paleo Conservative]

Your comments are really timely given the recent publication of a scientific paper where the researchers created a functional polio virus from published gene sequences. The publication was misguided and alot like publishing nuclear weapon blueprints. Our National Academy of Sciences should have had more insight.

Probably a lot worse.

[Diana Rose]

bump

[anonimouse]

I truely agree. I think I'm pretty sure I'm o.k. with this thing, but I want to be 100% sure that I'm going to be o.k. I like to keep my vacinations up to date. You just never know, when it is needed.

They usually say you have to renew your vacinations every 10 years, I think it is time to make sure I have all of mine up to date.

I think if we want to risk it, that we should be given the liberty to choose to have the Small Pox vacination done if we choose to do so. I will pray and give everything over to God and let him take care of me. If I did not make it, for taking that chance than I'd know I'd still be o.k. for I'll be with my Lord and God in Heaven. I will pray for all of us.

[anonimouse]

I'm sorry to sound a bit off here. But, I've been reading this for a bit.

I sure hope we do not have to have a Titanic Epic here. I want the Congress or the Medical people who claim to have enough, really mean it. Not just give us blind hope like that. I want all of us, even the less fortunate people to be included. Not just the people who have more money.

I want it to be enough to go around. I want us to have the right, the freedom to choose the vacination if we choose to have it or not. I do not want my fait decided by someone else. This is my life. It is your life too. We are valuable, Special individuals. We need better credit than what they trust us with. To ourselves. I want to have the vacination and take my chances. I'll be brave enough to do it. If it can alert and save everyone else. I'd take the chance and brave it for all of us.

[anonimouse]

I think the smartest thing congress can do. Is right now, before things get crazy and out of hand.

I think they should cloan the Small Pox Vacination. Or make more of it somehow.

It is better to have more than enough, than not enough.
It is better to be planned and prepared than to be ingnorant and not prepared.

[Hunble]

By now, you should have learned an important lessons...

Never trust the MSM as a source of information!

Even I did not have difficulty obtaining the Smallpox vaccination.

[EternalHope]

Welcome to FreeRepublic!

One of the strengths of FreeRepublic is the ability to research a topic for several years into the past. The thread you were reading was from about two years ago. (You can see the dates things are posted at the bottom of the posts.)

I haven't seen a current update on the status of the nation's smallpox vaccine supply, but I'm sure it's better than it was two years ago. Let's hope we never need to find out!