Posted on 11/26/2002, 7:27:34 AM by Cinnamon Girl
Edited on 4/29/2004, 9:01:42 AM by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush is expected to announce a plan in the next few weeks to vaccinate 500,000 health workers for smallpox, followed up by a second wave of vaccinations for 7 million to 10 million other health workers, firefighters, police and first responders to protect them against bioterrorism, an administration official told CNN Monday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
It has such a history in America, of wiping out scores of people. People in the colonial period used to put a white flag on their house to indicate if they were infected with smallpox (or something like that.)
Also, I note that they are asking for the states' mass vaccination plans to be completed by Dec. 1st. It will take some time to review and coordinate them, so it doesn't sound to me like we'll be hearing any war drums until sometime after Jan 1.
Since they are talking about voluntary clinical trials for the public, the expected war date may be further away than that.
This is the first admission I have seen in print, although it could be readily assumed from the fact of the British as well as us being up and ready to vaccinate their whole populations now.
Have you ever seen this statement before. "Have said"...when did they say this before? Before it was also might, maybe, possibly....
Then a few weeks later, there was a small blip on the news that said a small amount of smallpox vaccine was found stored away in a lab, and this was good news because more vaccine could be made from it. I believe I heard it on CNN over a year ago. I found it odd somehow. It's strange for a lab to have material sitting around for years with no one knowing. Everything is suppose to be properly labeled and documented.
If smallpox hits, just don't try to run a quarantine blockage without expecting to show proof of vaccination.
Just post a white flag on FR when you come down with it, so we can go later and find your body and give it a proper burial.
Overall, I think this is probably the best plan they could have come up with.
Sometime I'll have to tell you the story of what happened to the frogs in a lab I worked in during the sixties that used to be used for pregnancy tests before we had the serological tests for HCG.
The date of the war isn't necessarily up to us.
(This article was posted in Free Republic about a year ago. But the posts aren't much to read. A long argument against someone called "blue buttercup" whose posts have all been deleted by the moderator. There is one gruesome photo, in post #5. There are plenty of other graphics on the net, including a sampling at from CDC.)
I don't think the chances of smallpox are high, but I do think they are real. And against what I view as the vanishingly-small risks of vaccination, I want my shot, and I'll take it as soon as it becomes available to me.
But of course there is no way to be certain this was done.
Presumably that is what officials are concerned about.
And the article above was wrong about the kill rate of smallpox. The weaponized smallpox (courtesy of the Russians) is Indian I variola, and has a kill rate of 50%. That means half of everyone who contracts it, dies.
The Russians got the variola in an epidemic raging through India in 1967, an epidemic which killed many, many people.
When I am not able to draw a conclusion, I'm going to ask questions. Here are some (I don't expect answers from any one person, of course)
That anthrax didn't spread, and indeed that vaccine might have been part of the problem for those who died. How do we know how smallpox (and the vaccine) will affect the public after so many years? Would this be a mutated form of the disease, altered so the vaccine makes it worse? How do we know terrorists aren't involved in its production or distribution?
Is this a sideshow? Those terrorists in the planes never should've been in the country since they weren't doing what they were given permission to be here for, and some were past the allotted time on their visas. First things first...and that means the borders. Right now a maniac could just walk infected people across the porous borders. But for some reason the borders aren't an issue to elected officials.
Where could this go? After 911, I don't trust anyone's crystal ball. In the wrong hands, the possibilities are chilling. The Homeland Security Bill has a lot of provisions we don't yet understand. We don't know what was snuck in there (as happens with all government programs). A lot of people are going to be given new responsibilities. How do we know there won't be some power-hungry types who won't misuse their new powers?
What about other diseases? Is the government really as focused on Sadam and smallpox as it appears to be? That would be giving other nutcases who don't like us a real big window of opportunity to act.
I'm nervous about both those people who "know" there's nothing wrong with these homeland security provisions and those who "know" that our democracy has been decimated by this bill. Another thing that makes me nervous is that most people don't question the erosion of freedoms; are they substantive or just necessary in our technological world? It seems that most people are too busy or too trusting or too clueless or too programmed to consider stuff that's happening. And you know what? That's what makes me the most nervous.
So folks, keep posting. But it'll be a long time before I'm comfortable being either for or against these events. But dialogue is a real necessary step.
Would you rather get smallpox , should there be bioterrorism ?
How about polio ? Are you old enough to remember what it was like, prior to there being a vacine ? If you aren't that old, then take it, from someone, who was alive back then, it was a horrible disease and one, that parents feared, every summer ! What they wouldn't allow their children to do, would amaze you.
Read the Bill; then try to understand, without preconceptions, what it actually says and what it doesn't say.
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