Via Instapundit: An article about how the gov't worried there would be a smallpox epidemic after 911...
we were working in a rural IHS (Indian Health service) clinic in Oklahoma, and we actually were alerted with plans on how to vaccinate our area. The vaccinations would be given out in local schools, and it told how to set up the clinic, who to vaccinate first, where to put those with the disease etc. All in detail.
I was tasked to read the paper: when we were in Africa, we had similar plans (never used, thank God) on what to do if cholera broke out in our area: You don't put everyone into a hospital, you treat them in alternative places (schools for example) including the home. This was not done with Ebola epidemics which spread to hospital personnel.
Why worry about it in rural Oklahoma? Well, a "war game" a few years before 911 was called Dark Winter, proposed a release of smallpox at an Oklahoma city truck stop.
The medical report is here.
Smallpox would actually be a lousy weapon for Islamoterrorists: It has a long incubation period, so the chance of it spreading to their own country is high. Even if it started in Oklahoma...(few know that many refugees from Iraq war I were settled there).
In the USA, there would be enough "first responders" and ex military folks with partial immunity or who would be vaccinated more recently.
Ironically, another "realistic" version of what would happen can be found in one of John Ringo's sci fi books. I have to laugh, that one bozo called it "conservative propaganda", but in a world where political correctness keeps one from saying non PC things, it is one way to recognize what is going on.
Here are the PC things I don't dare say for fear of being a racist, even though as a doc I have had to deal with the people suffering because the gov't doesn't want to acknowledge what is going on (which would enable them to use social pressure to stop it)
No one wants to recognize black on black crime is why the murder rate in the US is so high. Nor does the press want to recognize the subtext in the immigration bill is because many black and Mexican gangs are infiltrating and killing in even small American towns, where Metziso hispanics who only want to protect their neighborhood are relabled "white hispanic racists" to fit the narrative, where Asian high school students in South Philly High who were beaten up by black gangs are themselves punished by being "reeducated" to "understand" black culture so they stopped upsetting the gang members, and where conservatives are considered more of a threat than Muslims who attend mosques with jihadi preachers from Saudi Arabia, one has to wonder when the truth will come out.
Yes, that makes me racist, but not really. Like Ringo, the pompous asses need to recognize that reality tends to bite back.
Ringo's book is on Baen books.
the plague in the book was not a bio attack, but retells the story of SARS, which was covered up in China and ended up killing a lot of folks in Canada.
and, alas, too often those who go into publichealth etc. are rule oriented, and not able to think outside the box, and that part of the satire is also true.
I remember a high up IHS official telling us our job was to treat our patients "within the limits of our budget" or some such thing. I pointed out three times that actually we were to treat our patients under the agreement between the gov't and the tribes, the hell with the budget: she didn't appreciate it since it was HER duty to increase the budget if we needed more money, and that would mean more paperwork for her.
In other words, paperwork and filling out forms was more important than actually treating folks.
Nor is this limited to the Federally funded clinics/hospitals: When I had surgery way back in the 1990's at a big shot Boston hospital, I saw the nurses about four quick visits a day, and the doctor for two minutes. I walked myself up and down the halls, and found the nurses busy at the desk doing paper work (on their new computer sytem). And I spent half of my walk answering question about their disease from other patients, who were clueless and worried because no one talked to them.
Presumably things are worse now.
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Related item: The "story" of gay martyrdom just hit the fan too.
Actually, those of us who knew reality were sceptical about this. I mean, what type of gay guy goes to a non-gay bar in rough neighborhoods and flirts with the heterosexual guys? Especially in Wyoming? Especially a guy who has been beaten up at least once in the past for doing so?
Camille Paglia pointed out that most in the gay community knew he enjoyed the "rough trade", i.e. enjoyed this type of thing because of the risk, not despite the risk.
This move "Looking for Mr Goodbar" was about this type of person, but with a woman. Yes, there is a type of woman who always choses losers: which is why there is a subgroup of "rape" victims who have a history of being raped before, and why abused women keep returning to the hospital for their injuries, even after they change partners.
The new book however brings up the meth connection. Meth wasn't a big problem back then, but it was around, as were the white biker gangs who used it... and the writer points out among a subset of the gay community also abused drugs to get high...that I wouldn't know about...most of the gays I saw were "closeted" and I usually treated their wives and ex wives for depression (which is why I back gay marriage).
So I guess that makes me homophobic too, so I'll add this item: A lot of the "homophobia" in Africa is because of male rape and sexual exploitation of kids/workers in colonial times when the "troubled" son often was sent to Africa to make his fortune, and in boarding schools.
Now that Dawkins has acknowledged it was common in his secular boarding school in the UK, maybe someone will notice that such abuse wasn't limited to church boarding schools for Canada's first nations, or to catholic priests. And yes I am angry about the priest problem: but it wasn't just priests who did it, but the fact you trusted priests made it worse for all involved.
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The problem with the above is that by not allowing someone to say that a small sub group of a population is doing something wrong, you end up by distorting the truth, and medicine is a reality based science.
The point here is "subgroup". Prejudice is saying all those in a group act the same.
Sociology is saying behavior belongs to subgroups, and public health points out the subgroups so you can treat the problem.
Political correctness denies the problem, and makes it taboo to mention the subgroups, so stands in the way of our recognizing and treating the public health problem.
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