Posted on 10/01/2001 5:24:17 PM PDT by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
As America braces for another wave of attacks, leading figures are suggesting these new attacks will include the use of germ warfare.
In a Page One story in Sunday's New York Times, the paper quoted senior military and medical experts who say the government is woefully unprepared to deal with this looming threat.
Should an enemy lurking within U.S. borders release lethal viruses or bacteria into the atmosphere or inject them into food or water supplies, the nation lacks the means to protect Americans from the deadly effects.
One anthrax attack, for example, could kill hundreds to millions of people.
While most experts say that such a surprise attack would be difficult to pull off, sooner or later some terrorist or terrorist group will acquire the ability to launch either a chemical or biological assault against the U.S.
In a wide-ranging analysis in the Sunday New York Times, correspondent Sherl Gay Stolberg explains the dilemma the U.S. faces in dealing with the bioterrorism threat.
"For bioterrorism, the No. 1 inadequacy, if you had to rank them, is the inadequacy of our public health infrastructure," Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told the Times.
Frist, a physician, said, "That is a product of about 15 years of neglect."
And the General Accounting Office, the watchdog congressional agency, reported last week that the government's bioterrorism planning was so uncoordinated that the agencies charged with dealing with the problem could not even agree on which of the many biological agents posed the biggest threat.
The Times cited officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who, for instance, consider smallpox a major risk, while the FBI does not even have smallpox on its list of biological threats.
Stolberg cites Dark Winter, an exercise conducted at Andrews Air Force Base that was meant to determine how well the nation could cope with an outbreak of smallpox.
As reported in NewsMax.com last week, the exercise began with the report of a case of smallpox discovered in Oklahoma City and escalated into a nationwide epidemic, spreading to 25 states and killing no fewer than several million victims.
During the imaginary epidemic, the government quickly ran out of smallpox vaccine ñ the U.S. has on hand little more a scant 7 million doses, according to some reports, or 15 million doses according to others ñ and was forced to make decisions on who would get the vaccine and who would face death.
Experts say at least 40 million doses would be needed in the event of an outbreak of the disease.
"Dark Winter showed just how unprepared we are to deal with bioterrorism," Jerome M. Hauer, the former head of emergency management in New York City and now a bioterrorism consultant to Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, told the Times. "It pointed out that there were significant challenges to all levels of government."
The most pressing problem medical experts report is the need to improve the government's ability to identify a biological attack as it is occurring, Stolberg writes.
"We are not going to have a bomb fly out of the sky and land on somebody so that we can say, 'Look, there's a bomb, and we are all dying of anthrax,' " according to Asha M. George, who studies biological warfare for the Nunn-Turner Initiative, a nonprofit foundation in Washington.
George told the Times: "It is most likely going to be a covert release, and people will get sick and go to their hospitals, and the public health system will have to pick up on this."
That system was tested in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attack.
As reported in NewsMax.com last week, a special 22-person Army unit in upstate New York was rushed to New York City within minutes of the attack, where they tested the air for the presence of biological agents and poisons. None were found, but the rapidity of the response was good news to concerned officials.
Health agencies also were alerted, and steps were taken to locate any evidence that a chemical or biological attack had been launched simultaneously with the WTC and Pentagon assaults.
But, Stolberg writes, "in many respects, Sept. 11 was not a true test. There were no biological or chemical agents to detect. Because there were far fewer people injured than officials had originally expected, the epidemic intelligence officers were working in relatively calm hospital surroundings, as opposed to crowded emergency rooms. The drugs and medical supplies went largely unused."
"When you don't see very uncommon things, you don't think about very uncommon things," Nicole Lurie, a former federal health official who worked on bioterrorism issues in the Clinton administration, told the Times. "I saw three people in the morning yesterday with acute respiratory illness. They all had the same symptoms. Should I think this is bioterrorism?"
"Are we prepared to prevent it? No," Dr. Lurie told the Times. "Are we prepared to respond to it? It depends on what form it takes. I would say that we are a whole lot further along than we were three or four years ago."
Hauer agreed. "A lot of what we need to do is being done," he said. "The problem is some of these steps take time."
Kevin G. Briggs
Monday, Oct.
The following question-and-answer sheet was prepared by Kevin G. Briggs, former president of the America Civil Defense Association and current director of the U.S. Disaster Preparedness Institute. His new book, "Preparing for Terrorism," will be released shortly.
Due to recent concerns and the growing interest in biological/chemical warfare preparedness and mitigation, we have extracted the following article from a recent issue of the Journal of Civil Defense in an effort to assist you in your preparations for a potential biological attack on the United States.
Question 1:
Is the U.S. prepared for anthrax attacks?
Answer 1:
Generally, no. An anthrax attack can occur very quietly without any bombs going off or any observable "clouds" being present. Our abilities to detect anthrax rapidly are very limited at present, so the first sign that an attack occurred could be thousands of people rushing to the hospital after a few days of exposure. Most states rate biological attacks as one of their weakest preparedness areas.
Question 2:
Why worry about anthrax attacks?
Answer 2:
Many are concerned that U.S.-based terrorists with ties to Iraq or Osama bin Laden might try to unleash a biological attack against the U.S. population in response to any major U.S. anti-terrorism initiative or military actions.
Question 3:
Is this a credible threat?
Answer 3:
This is an unknown. We know that Iraq has hidden and lied about much of its biological warfare program. We do know that Iraq has claimed to have produced, and subsequently destroyed (so it says), roughly 9,000 liters of anthrax.
In addition, it has admitted testing anthrax and other agents as part of its biowarfare program. As a result of this and other perceived threats, former Secretary of Defense Cohen decided to vaccinate all active duty and reserve personnel against anthrax.
He shifted $500 million to new chemical and biological preparedness programs. Former President Clinton also added roughly $10 billion to the budget (in January 1999) into preparing for weapons of mass destruction terrorism ñ largely to help mitigate biowarfare attacks.
The bottom line is that Iraq has the technical expertise and demonstrated capability to support anthrax terrorism. Whether it or other terrorist organizations have successfully placed (or attempted to place) terrorists in the U.S. with anthrax is unknown ñ or at least unknown to the American public.
Many other countries have known or suspected biological warfare programs. Information and expertise from Russia's extensive biowarfare programs are likely to have leaked out to several other nations and terrorist groups.
Question 4:
How big a problem is anthrax?
Answer 4:
Anthrax weapons can be produced that can have the same killing capability as nuclear weapons for a fraction of the cost and expertise. For example, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory did a comparison of costs of various threats and came up with the following:
Weapons compared to cost for killing most people within a square-mile area
Conventional cluster bomb weapons: up to millions of dollars
Neutron bomb: roughly $2 million
One ton of GB nerve agent: up to $100,000
1 kilogram of anthrax (2.2 lb): less than $50
Question 5:
How deadly is anthrax?
Answer 5:
According to the late Dr. Chester of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, cultured anthrax has roughly 2 x 105 lethal doses per gram. Anthrax in a slurry has roughly 107 lethal doses per gram. Powdered Anthrax has roughly 108 lethal doses per gram.
Former Secretary of Defense Cohen illustrated this point on TV by saying that a five-pound bag of anthrax, if properly dispersed, could kill perhaps half of the population of Washington, D.C.
Dr. Harold Strunk, who retired from the U.S. military and has extensive experience with anthrax, stated that a sugar cube quantity of anthrax could theoretically kill 100 million people. He pointed out that in reality, the number of people potentially killed by this amount of anthrax is much less because of the problems of dispersal within a population.
Question 6:
How would an anthrax attack occur?
Answer 6:
According to the late Dr. Chester, the best method of spreading lethal anthrax is through spraying the spores into the wind, where it is subsequently inhaled and begins to multiply. Dr. Chester, while at Oak Ridge National Labs, looked at many anthrax attack scenarios, which resulted, in part, with the following estimations:
Scenario 1: A single-operator terrorist with a truck-mounted 55-gallon drum of anthrax and sprayer could cause tens of thousands of deaths within a city.
Scenario 2: A sophisticated and well-trained technical terrorist group with four medium-sized planes (DC-3 size) were shown to potentially kill 35 percent of the U.S. population with one night flight spraying anthrax over key population centers.
Question 7:
Some experts say anthrax is difficult to disperse through air and sunlight. Is this true?
Answer 7:
Presumably the terrorists would be trained on what the best weather conditions are for dispersing anthrax spores and how to effectively produce an aerosol laden with anthrax spores. According to experts, this would typically be done at night or on an overcast day with a gentle breeze so that the sun would not kill off the spores before they are inhaled. Terrorists can certainly wait for the right weather conditions to exist. According to studies performed by the Oak Ridge Labs and the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, a well-executed attack can kill thousands to many millions. The Defense Department has formally stated that a large portion of a city could be killed in a well-executed anthrax attack (see http://www.anthrax.osd.mil/Flash_interface/default.html).
Question 8:
How vulnerable is the food supply to anthrax?
Answer 8:
Anthrax spores can fall upon food in either a dedicated attack on the food supply or as a secondary effect of an airborne release. If ingested in a sufficient dose, then an intestinal form of anthrax can occur that can be lethal for somewhere between 25 percent and 60 percent of those infected - if it is conventional anthrax for which we have clinical data resulting from the few cases where people ate infected meat. However, if the antibiotic supplies are limited, or a more drug-resistant strain is used, then a higher percentage of deaths would likely be expected.
Question 9:
What should be done at the governmental level?
Answer 9:
Educate the public on the threat and how to counter it. This should include candid (but sanitized) information on any known attempted threats that have occurred in the past. The public deserves to know what is fact and what is fiction with the many rumors that have spread. (For example, USA Today and other news outlets reported a few years ago that there were several attempts by terrorists with biological warfare agents from Iraq who were successfully thwarted as they tried to enter our country ñ and some news sources said that some actually did enter.)
Public education should also include how to prepare in advance to limit your exposure during any future biowarfare attack, as well as instructing medical personnel on how to treat this disease (see the USPDI website for some practical recommendations).
Learn more about the Russian and other strains of anthrax and develop new vaccines and antibiotics as required. Research on new non-drug-based antibiotics, such as the ASAP Solution being studied at BYU, should be accelerated. Expand the current vaccination program for people who live in high-threat areas or in high-risk professions. For example, a vaccination program similar to what is required of the military could be offered on a voluntary basis to medical personnel and Ffirst responders to blast/chem/bio/radiation scenes.
Encourage Congress to increase the vaccine production capabilities in the U.S. (currently only one company in the U.S. produces the vaccine) so that concerned citizens can be vaccinated, not just U.S. military personnel, and to allow for rapid mass immunizations should a large terrorist biowarfare attack occur.
Continue research on rapid detection devices for anthrax and other biological weapons and distribute these for real-time, 24-hour monitoring of major urban areas.
Increase the quantity of stockpiled antibiotics as well as the number of dispersal locations to respond to anthrax and other biowarfare attacks. Hours of delay in receiving antibiotics can translate to thousands or millions of additional deaths. Antibiotic stockpiles should be readily available to the medical community without having to wait 12 or more hours. Low-cost disposable respirator masks and latex gloves should also be stockpiled, as the current supplies (especially of respirators) could be quickly depleted and lead to many unnecessary deaths and prolonged social disruption.
Train and immunize emergency services personnel on how to identify/treat/triage biowarfare victims and how to limit the further spread of anthrax and other biological agents.
Upgrade intelligence, customs and law enforcement capabilities to thwart potential biological terrorists without infringing on citizens' rights.
Question 10:
What can the average American do to be prepared?
Answer 10:
Here are some practical steps to consider:
There is an extremely low risk of biological attack if you live far outside a major urban area. Hence, if you live tens of miles outside a major city, you probably do not need to do much to be prepared other than have food, water, power, and medical supplies, etc., stored up in case of long infrastructure outages due to biological attacks. Some low-cost medical supplies, such as disposable HEPA or N95 respirators and some latex gloves, would be needed if a highly infectious bio-warfare agent was used.
If you live in or near a large urban area, you should learn how to make bio-safe rooms at your home and place of business (see www.usdpi.org for details). If you learn of an attack that is imminent or has occurred in your area:
If you really believe you've been exposed, you need to seek professional advice and antibiotic treatments immediately. If you wait until clear symptoms appear (normally after one to six days after exposure), in the case of anthrax, it will probably be too late to save yourself. However, be careful not to overreact to false warnings or rumors of attacks.
Dead animals or people who have died from anthrax should not be cut into but buried quickly and deeply or cremated to reduce spore spread, which occurs with exposure to air. Those treating suspected anthrax patients should wash their hands frequently and take preventive antibiotics [though sick human to well human transmission is unlikely].
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: backhoe
The "Good Stuff Maynard" link you have that I posted earlier has been nuetered due to the situation in Afghanistan. Another good reason to archive good websites to your hard drive in case you cannot access them via the Internet for whatever reason.
You can save websites onto your hard drive using Micro$oft's Internet Explorer by clicking the "File "drop down menu in the upper left of your browser window, then click "Save as". Then under "Save as", click and select .mht (web archive file). Also type in the folder you want to save the info to. This will save the website text and pics into one file that your browser can view anytime offline.
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