Are we ready for this?

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Unk's Wild Wild West : One Thread

A young boy with face lesions from smallpox is shown in this undated file photograph. Americans may be suffering from 'anthrax anxiety' now, but attackers who want to wreak biological havoc have a range of other, often more horrifying agents to choose from, such as smallpox, experts say. Routine vaccination against smallpox ended in 1972, and infection was eliminated from the world in 1977. (Cheryl Tyron/CDC via Reuters)

-- uh-oh (don't@think.so), October 23, 2001

Answers

Smallpox Is Ideal Weapon

Col. Byron Weeks, M.D., ret. Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2001

The author, Dr. Weeks, served with the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps and was hospital commander at Bitburg Air Force Base. He is a lecturer on infectious diseases and biological warfare.

There has been intensive covert research in many countries, in an attempt to produce modifications in disease-producing viruses.

Russia and Iraq have been at the forefront of these researches.

There have emerged several major threats to mankind in the form of lethal viruses and bacteria.

Among these are smallpox (variola), hemorrhagic viruses such as Ebola, and the encephalitis viruses.

Ebola is extremely susceptible to sunlight, heat and drying. It is difficult to handle and deliver while still viable and infectious.

Nonetheless, it is highly lethal and effective in large enclosed spaces such as auditoriums and, probably, stadiums.

Most of the encephalitides are primarily mosquito- or insect-borne.

The ideal bioweapon should be highly lethal, hardy, easy to culture and not too complicated to deliver to the intended victim population.

Most of the weaponized viruses are difficult to deliver because they are fragile and especially vulnerable to exposure to air, sunlight, dryness and heat.

Russia is the principal nation conducting research on the nuclear polyhedrosis virus, an insect virus that secretes a protective protein crystalline coat around itself that renders the organism resistant to ambient effects of heat, cold and sunlight and also increases viability.

According to Dr. Ken Alibek, former head of the Bioweapons Program for the Soviets, during the 1980s and 1990s the Russian Biopreparat experimented with the insertion of smallpox genes into the polyhedrosis virus, and may have succeeded in producing an even more hardy killer virus.

I consider variola smallpox to be a likely biological weapon to be used against the United States, because those previously vaccinated have largely lost immunity.

Even in its original form, smallpox may be the ideal killer virus because it is readily cultured, highly contagious, and relatively resistant to environmental changes.

After a laydown from aircraft using aerosol suspension it will usually survive long enough in the aerosolized mist to be carried on the wind to reach, and eventually kill, a high percentage of human hosts. The airborne droplets are small (1-5 microns) and remain suspended long enough to spread over a 50-mile-wide area.

Smallpox: The Disease

Signs and Symptoms: Clinical manifestations begin acutely with malaise, fever, rigors, vomiting, headache, and backache. Two to three days later lesions appear, first on the face and arms, then later on the legs, quickly progressing from macules to papules (red spots) and eventually to pustular vesicles (blisters). They are more abundant on the upper extremities and face.

Diagnosis: Neither electron nor light microscopy are capable of discriminating variola from vaccinia, monkeypox or cowpox. The new PCR diagnostic techniques may be more accurate in discriminating between variola and other Orthopoxviruses.

Treatment: At present there is no effective chemotherapy, and treatment of clinical cases remains supportive.

Prophylaxis (Prevention): Immediate vaccination or revaccination should be undertaken for all personnel exposed.

Isolation and Decontamination: Droplet and airborne precautions for a minimum of 17 days following exposure for all contacts. Patients should be considered infectious until all scabs separate, and they quarantined during this period.

In the civilian setting, strict quarantine of asymptomatic contacts may prove to be impractical and impossible to enforce. A reasonable alternative would be to require contacts to check their temperatures daily and to remain at home. All bed linens and objects in contact with the infected person should be handled carefully [latex gloves, surgical masks] so as not to spread the virus. Disinfection of clothing, dishes and utensils with hypochlorite [bleach] should be carefully performed.

Any fever above 38 degrees C (101 F) during the 17-day period following exposure to a confirmed case would suggest the development of smallpox. The contact should then be isolated immediately, preferably at home, until smallpox is either confirmed or ruled out, and remain in isolation until all scabs separate.

Although the fully developed cutaneous eruption of smallpox is unique, earlier stages of the rash could be mistaken for varicella (chicken pox). The smallpox blisters tend to all be at the same stage and size, whereas in chickenpox they are in different sizes and stages.

Secondary spread of infection constitutes a nosocomial hazard [spread by medical personnel in the hospital] from the time of onset of a smallpox patient's exanthem [rash] until scabs have separated. Quarantine with respiratory isolation should be applied to secondary contacts for 17 days post-exposure. Vaccinia vaccination, with the attenuated [weakened] virus early in the disease, and vaccinia immune globulin both possess some efficacy in post-exposure prophylaxis.

References:

1. USAMRIID Manual of Biological Warfare.

2. "Biohazard," Dr. Ken Alibek, former Deputy Commander of the Soviet Biopreparat for Research on Biological Weapons.

-- (only@matter.of.time), October 23, 2001.


Thought I would throw a little rationality into the debate.....

The following is an article by Stephen Milloy of the Cato Institute (and publisher of the web site JunkScience.com).

From:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,35758,00.html

Concern over the possibility of terrorist attacks involving biological agents—especially the smallpox virus—is developing into full-fledged hysteria. Sen. Bill Frist claimed last week that a smallpox attack could kill 40 million Americans.

But a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, slated to appear in the November-December issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases and detailed here for the first time, should provide some relief to a worry-worn public.

The CDC researchers say smallpox appears much less infectious than commonly thought. This assessment calls into question the widely publicized results of last summer’s bio-terrorism war game called "Dark Winter" – a primary rationale for the current scare mongering.

Dark Winter was designed to simulate U.S. response to terrorism with smallpox. The exercise was developed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies and the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, and held at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. in June 2001.

Its participants, including more than a dozen current and former government officials and news media personalities, reacted to a make- believe smallpox attack.

Dark Winter began with a report that, on December 9, 2002, 24 persons reported to Oklahoma City hospitals with a strange illness. The CDC confirmed the illnesses as smallpox and the players reacted to control the epidemic. They pretended to fail so that, within two months after the epidemic started, three million cases of smallpox and one million deaths had occurred hypothetically.

Dark Winter ended with the collapse of interstate commerce, crowds rioting in the streets and the National Security Council discussing the need for martial law – a chilling scenario.

But like any other hypothetical exercise, Dark Winter is limited by the reality of its underlying rules and assumptions. One key assumption was that each person with smallpox would infect at least 10 other people and that those 10 people would each infect 10 more people and so forth. Dark Winter’s designers claimed this was a low or "conservative" assumption.

This assumption, and its use as the basis for the simulation, arises from Dark Winter participants at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies. Center director D.A. Henderson likes to emphasize a 1970 outbreak of smallpox in Germany where one patient appeared to infect 17 others and a 1972 outbreak in Yugoslavia where one infected person infected 38 others.

But the authors of the new CDC study regard these infection rates as extreme and unusual. They call the Yugoslavia incident "probably a record number" and describe the German incident as caused by "close sustained contact in a hospital."

The CDC researchers looked at data from a number of different outbreaks around the world in the 1960s and 1970s. They report that most outbreaks averaged less than two persons infected per infectious person. Most outbreaks recorded less than one person infected per infectious person. In all outbreaks, some infected persons did not transmit a symptomatic case of smallpox to another person.

The researchers cite the last case of naturally occurring smallpox in October 1977 as further evidence of the difficulty for one person to infect others. Of the 161 persons who had contact with the infected person, 12 unvaccinated persons had face-to-face contact. None of the 12 became ill with clinical cases of smallpox.

Although evidence exists that one person can infect many others and that many in the U.S. are susceptible to smallpox—meaning they’ve never been exposed or vaccinated—the CDC researchers concluded "the probability that the average transmission rate will be greater than two cannot be demonstrated reliably."

So should we blindly accept the Dark Winter scenario when the war game may have been critically flawed?

This is not to say that the possibility of bio-terrorism via smallpox should be ignored. But the hysteria grounded in Dark Winter should cease. It should be replaced with a more sober approach to the possibility of a smallpox attack.

The U.S. Government has accelerated the order of 40 million smallpox vaccines—a rationale move, and not only to squelch an epidemic. Dark Winter players believe that, "Forcible constraints on citizens may likely be the only tools when available vaccine stocks are depleted."

Physicians, hospitals and local public health officials should be calmly reminded about the symptoms of smallpox and actions to take in case of a breakout. Channels of communication between local and national public health officials need to be improved. The sooner infected individuals can be isolated and populations can be vaccinated the sooner an epidemic can be halted.

None of these actions, however, require the public to be panicked.

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).

-- Johnny Canuck (j_canuck@hotmail.com), October 23, 2001.



-- anthrax (looks@like.pizza), October 23, 2001.

Monday October 22 3:34 PM ET

Think Anthrax Is Scary? Other Agents Are Worse

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans may be suffering from ''anthrax anxiety'' now, but attackers who want to wreak biological havoc have a range of other, often more horrifying agents to choose from, experts say.

Smallpox is highly contagious and a particularly horrible disease, botulinum toxin could be sneaked into water supplies and paralyze thousands and plague is easily spread and evokes unpleasant reminders of medieval epidemics.

Bioterrorism and biological warfare experts have for three years been sounding increasingly urgent warnings about the risk of a germ attack and had finally started getting government funding to increase vaccine doses, stockpile antibiotics and explore various treatments for deadly hemorrhagic fevers.

They had compiled an ``A'' list of likely germ agents to be used in attacks, topped by anthrax.

Anthrax is considered by military and bioterrorism experts to be the weapon of choice because it is so deadly when inhaled, with up to a 90-percent death rate; it is relatively easy to get hold of; the spores are stable and can be dispersed by anything from a letter to a bomb; and because the symptoms look harmless until it is almost too late to treat it.

But anthrax is not easy to process into a usable form, is easy to treat with antibiotics and is not contagious.

SMALLPOX IS CONTAGIOUS AND DEADLY

Lots of other diseases are very contagious, including smallpox. A global vaccination program wiped it out in 1977, but the variola virus that causes smallpox is considered a good germ warfare weapon because it kills 30 percent of its victims, perhaps with a higher rate of fatalities if it is inhaled.

Everyone born before 1972 was vaccinated, but experts say the immunity has probably worn off for most.

``Although smallpox has long been feared as the most devastating of all infectious diseases, its potential for devastation today is far greater than at any previous time,'' the Working Group on Civilian Biodefense, made up of 25 doctors and researchers who have been studying biological warfare for years, said in a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (news - web sites) in February.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) (CDC) says it has 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine -- but some experts say the true amount could be as little as half that because the vaccine may have degraded while in storage.

Tests are underway to see if the vaccine stockpile can be stretched by diluting it and work has begun on making a new vaccine. The U.S. government has said it wants to build up a supply of 300 million doses, just in case.

The vaccine, if given quickly enough after infection, can prevent a patient from becoming mortally ill.

PLAGUE NOT A THREAT OF THE PAST

Plague is another infectious disease that bioterrorism experts have been warning about. It infects between 1,000 and 3,000 people around the world every year, including a few in the United States, and also has a more dangerous inhaled form called pneumonic plague.

Spread by fleas carried by rodents, plague is caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria.

The first signs of illness in pneumonic plague are fever, headache and a cough that brings up blood. Untreated, the pneumonia can kill but several antibiotics can stop the infection, including streptomycin and tetracycline.

Like smallpox, plague can be spread from person to person through invisible, infected droplets of saliva.

Tularemia, sometimes called rabbit fever, is another animal disease that occasionally infects people around the world.

Symptoms start within 1 to 10 days after exposure, with a high fever and perhaps a blister if the infection came through the skin. Experts say tularemia bacteria could be spread in an airborne explosion or perhaps by something like a crop duster.

It can kill but antibiotics work against tularemia.

Then there are the hemorrhagic fevers, from the well-known Ebola (news - web sites), to Argentine hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and tick-borne encephalitis -- all caused by viruses.

DEADLY VIRUSES

Patients can bleed under the skin, out of the mouth, eyes and ears, and can die of shock. With the exception of yellow fever and Argentine hemorrhagic fever, no vaccines have been developed against any of the viruses, which are contagious and can be spread by insect bites.

Botulinum toxin, made by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria, is perhaps best known these days for its use by plastic surgeons, who inject tiny amounts to freeze muscles in the face and reduce some wrinkles.

But botulism is also a deadly form of food poisoning, causing severe paralysis and death.

Symptoms start after 6 hours to 2 weeks and include double or blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech and muscle weakness that descends from the shoulders to the legs.

``Botulinum toxin poses a major bioweapon threat because of its extreme potency and lethality, its ease of production, transport and misuse, and the need for prolonged intensive care among affected persons,'' the Working Group on Civilian Biodefense said.

``Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known. A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled, would kill more than 1 million people, although technical factors would make such dissemination difficult.''

Botulism is not contagious and the CDC has some antitoxin to treat it.

Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult tried to use botulinum toxin at least three different times, according to the report. ``These attacks failed, apparently because of faulty microbiological technique, deficient aerosol-generating equipment or internal sabotage,'' the working group said.

The group got the botulinum toxin out of the soil.

-- Tommy Thompson (don't worry @ no. problem blah blah blah), October 23, 2001.


Eeeeeeew, gross! That kid could never be in my click. I'd never hang with that kid. I'd never hook-up with that kid. Eeeeew, gross!

Chow, Missie

-- (Missie@club.X), October 23, 2001.



Aaaaaw, come on Missie! It's cool to be ugly. The uglier the better. He is a cool niglet, could be a good gang leader!

-- (have@some.pizza), October 23, 2001.

Smallpox lesions on skin are shown in this photograph taken in 1973 in Bangladesh. Smallpox infection was eliminated from the world in 1977. Smallpox is caused by variola virus with an incubation period of about 12 days following exposure. Initial symptoms include high fever, fatigue, and head and back aches. A characteristic rash, most prominent on the face, arms, and legs, follows in 2-3 days. The rash starts with flat red lesions that evolve at the same rate. Lesions become pus-filled and begin to crust early in the second week. Scabs develop and then separate and fall off after about 3-4 weeks. The majority of patients with smallpox recover, but death occurs in up to 30% of cases. Routine vaccination against smallpox ended in 1972. (Reuters - Handout)

-- uh-oh (no@vaccine.available), October 26, 2001.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ