posted 11-27-2002 05:00 PM            

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Wednesday November 27, 2002
The Guardian

Up to 10 million US health workers, police officers and firefighters are to be vaccinated against smallpox, according to a Bush administration official.

Half a million health workers will be vaccinated in the next few weeks against the possibility of a bioterror attack, according to the report.

President Bush is expected to announce shortly the plan to carry out a rolling smallpox vaccination programme, CNN television news reported yesterday.

The department of health and human services has asked all 50 states to submit a mass vaccination plan by December 1, for use in an actual smallpox attack.

Although there is no evidence of any plans for a smallpox attack, the first stage of the mass vaccination is said to be planned to start within a few weeks, targeting 500,000 health workers.

This would be followed by vaccinations for 7-10 million police officers and other emergency workers. The vaccine would also be made available to the public, although the government would not recommend that everyone applied for it.

Smallpox vaccinations carry risks, with one or two people per million vaccinated dying from the side effects and 15 per million suffering serious harm. Many others would also suffer unpleasant side-effects. Vaccinations for health workers would not be compulsory, and it is anticipated that many will refuse on the grounds that they are not worth the risk.

"There's no question that the president feels the concern, the anguish," the anonymous official told CNN. "That's why it's taken so long [to decide]."

"He wanted to understand the issue and get advice from many people. At the end of the day, we could kill some people."

The official added: "On the other hand, if we're not prepared, how do you go back and look in the mirror and say, 'We could have vaccinated people and been better prepared, but we didn't want to stand up to a tough decision'?"

posted 12-05-2002 01:50 PM            

2) Since the US, Canada, France, and UK are publicly announcing mandatory SMALLPOX vaccinations, wouldn't terrorists use something else, such as the following:

anthrax, cryptococcosis, escherichia coli, haemophilus influenzae, brucellosis (undulant fever), coccidioidomycosis (San Joaquin Valley or desert fever), psittacosis (parrot fever), yersina pestis (the Black Death of the 14th Century), tularemia (rabbit fever), malaria, cholera, typhoid, bubonic plague, cobra venom, shellfish toxin, botulinal toxin, saxitoxin, ricin, shigella flexneri, s. dysenteriae (Shiga bacillus), salmonella, staphylococcus enterotoxin B, hemorrhagic fever, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, histoplasma capsulatum, pneumonic plague, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, dengue fever, Rift Valley fever, diphtheria, melioidosis, glanders, tuberculosis, infectious hepatitis, encephalitides, blastomycosis, nocardiosis, yellow fever, typhus, tricothecene mycotoxin, aflatoxin, Q fever, or ebola.