This is the kind of mixed messages we are getting from the "experts." On the one hand we are promised new improved vaccines, on the other hand people like Fauci admit to schemes to
watering down 14 million vials kept in storage since 1972. Which at a 10 to 1 dilution would supply 140 million doses or enough to vaccinate nearly half the country. Sorry, like so many others, if there is a new improved vaccine coming out, I'll wait. In the meantime, in the last year, I was consoled by the certain knowledge that if terrorists unleashed a warhead over NYC spreading smallpox I'd have anywhere from 4 to 7 days or longer (depending where in the ring I was standing at the time) to get vaccinated.
And while you challenge me personally, this is not me talking. This is mainstream organizations such as the ANA, AMA, certain non-hysterical elements within the NIH and the CDC's own guidances on the matter. I seriously doubt Hoyt is any less confused about these mixed messages and promises of a new vaccine than the rest of us but he makes believe that he is in order to support the party line (e.g. CSICOP).
On DeeTees question, Dr. Fauci's article if you read it, you would see he mentions the very promising results
certain anti-virals such as those derived from ribavirin have shown (in vitro) combatting smallpox. Secondary infections which can lead to death can also be treated with new and better antibiotics and the smallpox itself can be treated with immune globulins after it is contracted and, as has been stated repeatedly and here above, if you are exposed, you have several days or longer to get vaccinated. Add to this the fact that that smallpox is naturally extinct and that there is little to fear from the known existing stocks, this is one vaccine that has no need to be given pre-emptively on a mass basis and that includes lining up some 13 million health care workers in this country who have refused to be a party to that. So there are multiple lines of reasons not to take the stockpiled vaccine, whether you are fortuitous enough to get the last vial made in 1982 (22 years old) or the stock made sometime before and up to 1972.
If I am correct in surmising that DeeTee is saying complications of the vaccine can be treated by antibiotics, I suggest she hasn't read the CDC guidances on this. And if they could be and in some cases they may be, why should anyone expose themselves to such a risk without having a better reason to do so? : the only one is being exposed to smallpox. I have never said smallpox is any less fatal today than in the past. It carries an alleged 30% fatality rate but that is disputed. But its everyone's favorite number. What I said was that anti-virals and antibiotics are available today which can lessen that fatality rate. We dont know since we havent had ay cases to try them out on. In the meantime smallpox is not a problem because it doesn't exist in the wild and there is no confirmed threat of its being launched against us as a bioweapon.
I am amazed that nobody here, none of you skeptics, are the least bit bothered about the vagueness with which years and quantities are tossed around in articles by wide spread small pox vaccination proponents. But I guess that's what is meant by having an agenda and wearing blinders in order to support it at any cost.
