Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (87409)	3/28/2003 8:20:57 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Sig - re: terrorist "bugs," there are bugs and then there are bugs. Anthrax, a rod-shaped bacterium, is actually rather hard to spread among the general populace, and relatively easy to treat, using antibiotics. Can't remember the percentage of people who died during the recent anthrax attack but the odds were pretty good. Smallpox, which is a virus, has far worse odds (30% mortality rate, higher for children less than 2) and no known cure. Unleashing smallpox on our world of unimmunized people would truly be unleashing hell, especially to the wretched of the earth. Several western countries have stockpiled vaccine. We'd live, the rest of the world wouldn't. When I am feeling paranoid, I wonder whether Saddam immunized his Ba'athist loyalists, and is planning on killing off the rest of the world and re-establishing the Garden of Eden in Mesopotamia. This is metaphor only. If 30% of the rest of the unimmunized world dies, 70% is left, and 70% of 7 billion is 4.9 billion. It would be genocide, but the world would not end. You and I were born when the world had less than 4.9 billion and it wasn't such a bad place. But still, it would be a plague unprecedented since the 15th century.