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by: Dante
I have been working in the Denver Metro area (COLO), as a paramedic for about 9 years now. In that time I have never seen the rash of sick people that I have seen in the last 4 months. It is epidemic proportions. It is generally manifesting as "flu" symptoms that seem to settle in to the lungs, resulting in respiratory problems. We generally treat the respiratory problem with albuterol sulfate (common beta stimulator drug used for asthma and other respiratory problems that need the bronchial tree to relax), which temporarily relieves the respiratory distress, only to have it return. Physicians are having harder and harder times treating these problems with traditional (antibiotics) therapies. In Denver, the 14 hospitals are going on Emergency Room divert several times a day. This only occurred occasionally (about once a month per hospital). However, in the last three months, I have seen these hospitals going on divert 2 or 3 times a week. The patients that are overloading these hospital ER's, are mostly being treated for the symptoms I just listed.
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Smallpox once again poses a serious global health threat but this time as a biological weapon, according to a U.S. medical expert who helped stamp out the virus more than two decades ago.
Writing in Friday's edition of the journal Science, Johns Hopkins scientist Donald Henderson warned that the United States was ill-equipped to deal with "bio-terrorists" who could easily use smallpox and the disease anthrax in their wars.
"Of the potential biological weapons, smallpox and anthrax pose by far the greatest threats," wrote Henderson, who heads Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies.
Unlike a chemical attack, biological weapons are usually invisible, silent and odorless and their appearance only becomes clear when patients go to emergency rooms with rarely or never-before-seen symptoms.
"Just as in the 1980s, the medical community rallied to educate policy makers about the dread of a nuclear winter, the same needs to be done for the remote -- but real -- threat biological weapons pose," wrote Henderson.
Smallpox, he said, posed an unusually serious threat because nearly everyone was susceptible to it as vaccinations had stopped worldwide more than two decades ago with the eradication of the disease.
The virus, in an aerosol form, could survive for 24 hours or more and was highly infectious even at low dosages, he said, adding it was unlikely the disease would be identified quickly enough for a vaccination program to be effective.
Few doctors had ever seen smallpox or received training in its diagnosis and mass vaccination would be difficult because of a shortage of the vaccine.
"Best estimates indicate that substantial additional supplies could not be ensured sooner than 36 months from the initial outbreak," said Henderson.
Like smallpox, he said an anthrax epidemic could be released via aerosol and could drift through a building or even a city without being noticed.
After two or three days, victims would appear in emergency rooms with nonspecific symptoms such as fever, cough and headache. Patients would probably die within 24-72 hours.
Henderson said the threat to U.S. cities as targets for biological weapons was highlighted by recent disclosures of the massive biological weapons industry in the former Soviet union, Iraq's smaller program and bioweapons research in 10 other countries.
While planning was underway by the military and intelligence communities to predict and forestall such attacks, he said these efforts generally excluded frontline staff such as doctors, hospitals and public health workers.
Henderson urged the private sector, federal, state and local governments to provide resources for training emergency room doctors and nurses to recognize symptoms caused by biological weapons.
(AP) Wheat growers in Arizona have been trying to cope with a federal quarantine of their crop for three years. The government just made their hardship worse. The quarantine restricting the shipment of Arizona wheat was imposed after Karnal bunt was found in some of that state's fields. The fungus is not harmful to humans, but it can reduce yield and give wheat a fishy odor. Now the state's wheat industry has learned that seeds carrying Karnal bunt spores may have gone to fields free of the fungus.
An embarrassed Arizona Department of Agriculture said Thursday that its lab si