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To: Ilaine who wrote (4250)	12/18/2002 9:14:33 PM
From: Climber	Respond to of 6901

Excellent article, CB, thanks. A good friend -- an M.D. and public health officer who's helping plan the smallpox response program here in the N.W. -- is pretty sure that if we have a terrorist incident it will be very hard to get control of it in the early stages. Traditional "ring containment" strategies would likely fail, resulting in mass vaccinations and possibly quarantines. His team's capabilities are now up to 100,000 vaccinations per 8-hour shift in metro areas. But that's not enough. In Minnestota, for instance, "If smallpox broke out anywhere in the world, public health officials in Minnesota would launch an immediate response that could mean mass vaccination of the state's 4.9 million people in less than a week." startribune.com The speed and spread of transmission, especially if the disease is introduced in high-traffic high-dispersal areas such as hub airports, would pretty much require a full national response. “A clandestine aerosol release of smallpox, even if it infected only 50 to 100 persons to produce the first generation of cases, would rapidly spread in a now highly susceptible population, expanding by a factor of 10 to 20 times or more with each generation of cases.” msnbc.com I agree that it's premature to begin wide-spread public vaccination programs, but the risk-benefit equation will change in a heartbeat with even the smallest outbreak. the truth fights terror Good motto. Cheers, Climber