Something is going on with small pox. Consider the
following:
1) Since 9/11, the United States has ordered
enough small pox vaccination doses for every man,
woman, and child in the United States. It will be
pre-positioned to move it to an infected area within 24
hours.
2) Plans are being laid to inoculate “First
Responders” here in the United States – medical
emergency crews, police and fire departments – as soon
as possible.
3) Israel has started inoculating all their
medical and emergency personnel. They have considered
inoculating everyone in Israel for small pox.
4) Britain now has plans for small pox
vaccinations and are prepared to begin those
vaccinations wherever an outbreak occurs.
Officially, small pox has been wiped out. It is not
supposed to exist anywhere on earth outside of
secured medical laboratories.
Why buy 300 million doses of small pox vaccine for a
disease that has been wiped out?
Small Pox vaccinations are not cost free.
Statistically 2 people per million vaccinated by the
disease will die. Many more will be permanently
scarred or disabled by the vaccine. For all the talk
about nukes, it is the threat of a small pox outbreak
that is mobilizing the government and making it willing
to risk mass inoculations.
One federal agency is sponsoring seminars to educate
medical professionals about a disease that has been
wiped out. Anthony Fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is warning
preparing them for dire (occasionally fatal) side
effects of Small Pox vaccinations. “These are things
Americans need to understand,” he says.
Why? There certainly isn’t a corresponding effort on
the part of the federal government to educate people
about nuclear blasts or atomic fallout. Why indeed?
The message is clear:
The threat of a small pox outbreak – which can only
come from terrorist attack since it does not exist in
the “natural world” – is the most dangerous terrorist
threat we face.
It can be moved into this country silently and quickly.
It doesn’t require ICBMs. It doesn’t require high tech
dispersal equipment (like VX, or Sarin, other chemical
weapons). The delivery vehicle for Small Pox is a
human. It is an infectious disease.
The 1995 film “Outbreak” film starring Dustin Hoffman
thrilled audiences as the President and a Doctor
struggled to contain an outbreak of Hemorrhagic Fever.
This real disease, of which Ebola is a strain, is
horribly infectious and deadly. It occurs naturally
today in the jungles of Africa. The President, faced
with the prospect of tens of millions of dead, decided
to quarantine a small coastal down and incinerate the
disease (and everyone in the town) by dropping a nuke
on it. Scary stuff. Great date movie.
In one scene the disease was spread when an infected
man started coughing in a movie theater. I think the
entire audience held their breath for two minutes. I
saw the movie twice – the second time I thought I’d be
cute and sneezed. My wife slugged me.
But that is how small pox spreads. It is very
infectious. It kills one third of those infected.
The President can’t nuke an American city.
Baghdad maybe.
But not Boston, Birmingham or Bismarck.
He has ordered, however, the preparation of enough
small pox vaccine to take care of us. Some people will
die or be permanently disfigured from the vaccination
itself. The government is taking this so seriously
that they’ve already created a compensation plan for
people who suffer from the side effects of the small
pox vaccine. The President has been briefed twice, in
detail, on the complications of mass inoculations.
With a war with Iraq, a weakening economy and, midterm
elections coming, up why is smallpox important enough to
receive the President’s personal attention?
This is a sleeper issue. It will come up. When it
does, the press will work itself into a frenzy and
pretend like they just heard about it.
So, where’s the threat? It’s not from nukes (at least
not until North Korea’s missiles can reach the West
Coast). It is small pox.
This isn’t on the nightly news. “Potential complications from inoculations” does not meet the
sound bite test demanded by TV producers. The Sniper does. Nukes in Baghdad do. War with Iraq does.
The discontinuity between the government’s mobilization for a small pox outbreak and what the press is focusing on is profound. And noteworthy.
