on smallpox vaccine

[brad]

so anyway weve all heard on the news how first responders will get smallpox vaccine. (including military thats like 11 million people)

what totally blew me away was that i know this woman who works in a group home or something (i think its like for retards or something) and anyway she said the staff were going to take it although she said it was voluntary.

but what really blew me away was that she said the (patients?) (inmates? heh) whatever theyre called they are all getting the vaccine too.

how weird.

meanwhile everyone everywhere admits the 1960's era vaccine offers absolutely no protection whatsoever against the russian strains of smallpox (that supposedly terrorists have or could have) ...

wtf?

vonnegut must have been right, intelligence is an evolutionary dead end.

and thees assholes who cant capitolize or spell reelly piss me off.

[BruceZ]

I understand that the 1960s era vaccine is really the same vaccine that was invented in 1790. 1 person in 1-2 million could die from the vaccine, so it's an interesting probability problem to determine if you are better off taking it. Bush decided to take it in order to inspire confidence in the health care workers he asked to take it. That was an interesting probability calculation too, and it may have been irresponsible of him to take that risk.

[brad]

'1 person in 1-2 million could die from the vaccine, so '

you heard about that guy who dropped dead from the flu shot?

itwas in the news cause he was like ceo or something.

anyway with 11 million gonna be vaccinated we'll see what the empirical casualty rate is.

p.s. i dont think bush will actually receive shot or if he does it will be a special version that definitely wont have any contaminants, not the general reconstituted crap everybody else will get

[Ray Zee]

whats worse is that everyone isnt getting the vaccine. it only is good if everyone gets it. what happens is you get a scab on your arm and that becomes contagious for smallpox. you must keep it clean and covered or others can catch smallpox. thats why the vaccine must be given to all or none. we can start our own small pox epidemic in the world where there is none.

[brad]

true the vaccine is contgious for 21 days but its a cowpox or something not s.p.

so its a real concern if youre visiting doctor/dentist to make sure theyre not contagious if youre visiting and you are at high risk like you have eczema or bad immune system (cancer, former cancer, hiv, etc.)

also the sop as described by most medical experts is 'ring vaccination', where if patient shows up all associates hes come into contact with are vaccinated so i dont think its true that all must be vaccinated.

in any case its admitted this vaccine will do nothing to stop the threat (ie, weaponnized strains of russian (or even US for that matter) smallpox used as bio weapon), only good against natural smallpox which has been eradicated! i just dont get it unless there is an alterior motive.

[Glenn]

Hi Ray,

I thought the day would never come, but I believe you are mistaken. The smallpox vaccine does not contain smallpox virus, so it cannot cause a smallpox outbreak. Vaccines are usually made from attenuated or dead forms of a virus which cause your immune system to react and produce antibodies without risking infection. The smallpox vaccine is a live virus vaccine, but the virus that causes smallpox, variola, is not used. A related virus, vaccinia, is used. Since they are so similar in structure, infection with vaccinia provides immunity to smallpox. However, the symptoms caused by the vaccinia virus are usually quite minor, and while rare cases of complication exist, it is nothing like smallpox. In the unlikely case that a vaccinated individual transmitted the virus to someone else, it would be similar to that second person recieving the vaccine as well. The idea originated when Edward Jenner began administering cowpox virus to patients to prevent smallpox in the late 1700s. It had been noticed that milkmaids often lacked the difiguring smallpox scars that were very common at the time. Apparently, this is where the phrase "pretty as a milkmaid" came from. I have never actually heard anyone say "pretty as a milkmaid", but every text I have read on the subject seems to bring this up so I guess someone say it /forums/images/icons/smile.gif. Some time later, vaccinia replaced cowpox as the virus of choice, but smallpox, live, attenuated, or dead, has never been used. Smallpox vaccine was the first vaccine developed.

A few other smallpox facts that have been clouded in the news:

1. At first, they were saying 30% and now 33% for the fatality rate. The texts I have seen list 20% as the fatality rate for the Asian strain, and 2% for the African strain. Assuming infected people could recieve adequate care, the fatality rate given the high standard of medial care in American compared to the places and times where previous outbreaks occured should be somewhat lower. I know this is not a *huge* difference, but I think this is an example of the media being slightly sensational. The illness is painful and disfiguring, but my sources say it's not as fatal as they are saying.

2. The vaccine is not terribly dangerous. Everyone in the developed world recieved the vaccine for over 100 years. Most of you who are over 45 or so recieved it. There is some risk, but for a healthy adult, it is pretty much negligible.

3. About Bush recieving the vaccine, he was probably vaccinated already when he was young, so the risk is probably significantly less than normal since a) he did not have a severe reaction last time he was innoculated and b) he probably still has some immunity to vaccinia from his previous vaccine c) he is very healthy, and any complications will be noticed and taken care of immediately (and quietly /forums/images/icons/smile.gif )

[Glenn]

Hi Brad,

The mostly likely strain of smallpox that could be used would from stocks of the virus that was eradicated. The US and the USSR both publicly kept stocks, but many other countries proabably did also. The USSR tried to develop a resistant strain but it is not clear how much success they had. Even if they did have some success, the vaccine could still provide some immunity. It is unlikely they were completely successful, IMO. This is comparable to the arugement against missle defense where someone says "well they could just use a backpack bomb" without the understanding that an ICBM would be much, much worse. A country like Iraq probably could not do this on its own. They could have gotten old Russian scientists, etc..., but even then, developing a completely resistant strain and then creating a new vaccine for it is exceedingly difficult.

[brad]

i beg to differ. a researcher working on mousepox (at a university, open pure research) changed one gene and it became 100% fatal in 1 day.

was in bbc or something it was an australian researcher and i posted it here a while ago (6 months?).

anyway the point is (that they made not me) that gee wiz, one little mod by a guy not even trying to create weapon and bingo, the next killer app.

so if you dont think soviets could create more lethal smallpox not contstrained by current vaccines , well, i just think youre naive.

however i agree with you that a 3rd world country could much more easily use a different biological agent against the US, perhaps the easiest would be targeting livestock/crops rather than people although logisticly that may be more difficult.

[Ray Zee]

yea glenn so right you are. after i took the time to check it out i found i was thinking back on an old wives tale i guess. the virus you can get is different from smallpox although not good still= but not deadly unless you have a weak immune system. then it can be.
i got the shot when i was a kid and still have the mark of it or another one. back then everyone was scared of smallpox as they remember the big outbreaks and how contagious it was. but it wasnt if you kept somewhat isolated, as you needed to be in close contact with someone infected.
but it was spread by the govt. to the indians by giving them blankets infected. at least that was what history says.
one way that they used to wipe out the indians from the great riches of the west, along with killing all the buffalo so they would starve.