NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm curious if people have an opinion on the feasibility of the American government's possible responses to bioterror attacks and how well they might *realistically* work. Given the response of FEMA to the hurricanes, I'm not holding out much hope. But the reason for this post is that back home in Seattle, they will be testing out a delivery system for vaccines. Linky (http://mmrs.fema.gov/news/publichealth/2005/sep/nph2005-09-20.aspx). The kicker? They're doing it through the POST OFFICE.

Each mail carrier, with a policeman in tow, will drop off 8-10 little packages of vaccine at each household so that the public can self-vaccinate. Your friendly mailman becomes the deliverer of medicine! :rolleyes: So.... all I want to know is, what was the person who dreamed this one up smoking? Does he think the mailman and policeman will show up for work? Does he think there will BE enough vaccine for everyone plus extra to drop off a large amount at each household?

I'm looking forward to hearing back from my dad after Saturday, when they test this. Another good thing. They're testing it on a holiday. So they're paying the carriers 2.5 times their normal pay, plus paying for the policemen. And each household will get a friendly package explaining the exercise. Anyone want to bet someone will think it's not just an exercise?

My government in action. God help us.

considering how many time the US mail lost my rent check...


I'm extemely happy I work in a HOSPITAL!

oh and yes, as Federal Employees, if the government says to show up for work... they better show up.

tho, I don't know how fast they can run down the street deliving to each house and apartment...

I'm kinda with you, if the government can't save people from floods and hurricanes, they sure as heck can't save us from a weaponized virus. Just the fact that their assuming they will have a vaccine for a Bio-weapon is worrying to me, what they would have to do in most cases of a Bio-weapon attack would be to quarantine the entire area, and hopefully evacuate those who are not infected yet.

I seriously doubt the federal employees will necessarily care if they are "told" to show up to work if there's an actual active threat, especially if it's a contagious one. Post office jobs are not exactly top of the line when you enter. :p

Part of Saturday's exercise is to time them too. They can deliver a lot of households fairly quickly though.

What exactly can the government really do anyway? Even trying to bring any reasonable defenses is outrageously expensive. Anything we do will just be window dressing to calm the public by making it seem like that the government is "doing something". Just like building all those "bomb shelters" in the '50s was supposed to protect us from the bombs. Yeah...

You know... that's actually not a bad idea (on paper I mean). The post office has a lot of people on set routes that know the area and where everyone lives.

Though, yeah, I don't exactly see them showing up to work, maybe they're hoping it'll be a surprise attack so they're all still on the job and the policeman is there to make sure they actually go out?

I seriously doubt the federal employees will necessarily care if they are "told" to show up to work if there's an actual active threat, especially if it's a contagious one. Post office jobs are not exactly top of the line when you enter. :p

Part of Saturday's exercise is to time them too. They can deliver a lot of households fairly quickly though.
wish there is some webcams set up to tape this...

You know... that's actually not a bad idea (on paper I mean). The post office has a lot of people on set routes that know the area and where everyone lives.

Though, yeah, I don't exactly see them showing up to work, maybe they're hoping it'll be a surprise attack so they're all still on the job and the policeman is there to make sure they actually go out?
I think the policeman is supposed to protect them. Although if it's bad, then all they'll serve to do is be small protection against people that need vaccine. I grant that the mail carriers all know their routes the best. But it would be impossible to have a surprise and still have the vaccines/innoculations on hand.

I'm also rather curious what would go in an actual package. Would you have to give people needles to poke themselves? That could turn out badly.

I'm also rather curious what would go in an actual package. Would you have to give people needles to poke themselves? That could turn out badly.
Depends upon what part of town you're in I guess. :p

Like I said, it looks good on paper, but I too am very curious to see how well it would actually run.

*snip* I'm also rather curious what would go in an actual package. Would you have to give people needles to poke themselves? That could turn out badly.

I don't know, but I would imagine some sort of intra-muscular auto-injector, similar to what soldiers use in the event of a bio-chem attack (or an epi-pen that people use for bee stings). I don't think you could go the proper hypodermic route, as I, personally, would rather die than stick myself with a proper needle...

My government in action. God help us.
Ummmm, I thought that you are a Canadian? :confused:

Let's make sure we know what bioterrorism is before we start talking about how to respond to it and how we think the government would respond to it. Bioterrorism is using a living weapon to attack a civilian population to inflict both casualties and fear. Poisons do not fall under bioterrorism. Viruses, bacteria, and parasites do. Bioterrorism requires the growth of a pathogen and an effective method of distribution. The pathogen has to be a new variety or it will get stopped in its tracks with existing cures and can't kill or present symptoms to quickly or it won't be easily spread. These combined make bioterrorism pretty difficult to pull off.

Now chemoterrorism is much simpler and easier. You can make a poor man's poison gas by mixing household cleaners. The most well known is probably chlorine gas releashed from bleach when introducing ammonia. Very corrosive, very dangerous. And its easy of manufacture combined with the ease of construction of an effect delivery system make it and other gaseous agents effect weapons of mass destruction.

The difficulty with nuclear terrorism is securing enough fuel for a bomb. The simpler and dirtier gun-type bomb requires more fuel than a compression-type but it's just a hollow tube with 2 chunks of shaped uranium at each end with explosives packed behind one. Fission bombs are extremely simple constructs and more than a few high school nerds have made mock-ups for their science fair projects.

I'm extemely happy I work in a HOSPITAL!
I don't know why you would be. Hospitals are already a big source of infection, especially for those who've just had work done. Sure you're close to the cure, but you're also close to a major source of the contagion. A hospital is about the last place I'd want to be in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

And while I've lost the Popular Mechanics issue that dispelled the Katrina myths, anyone who did read it knows that while Katrina was no picnic it was not as bad as we were first led to believe. The Katrina relief effort was actually about one of the largest domestic rescue porojects in US history. The failures of some top local and federal officials got blown out of proportion and rumors snowballed like mad. There were no piles of bodies in a Superdome freezer. There were no snipers taking out helicopters. There were no gang-rapes (just an attempted sexual assault or two and they were stopped around the groping phase). The levees were not taken out with bombs and in fact held up against the surge, it was the spill-over after that washed away the foundation that caused them to breach. People got MREs from the state and feds. Make no mistake, it was pretty bad; a city got flooded, scheduled evacuations never took place and the buses got the same treatment as the homes, people did die, people did get displaced, and a category 3 hurricane knocked out a significant amount of the gulf coasts oil production and refining facilities. It just wasn't as bad as it could have been or as we were initially led to believe. Everyone reads the headlines, no one reads the corrections.

The system is never going to work, and thats beside the point.

A biological agent released in aerosol form or liquid form in public water would not cause immediate alarm, unlike say an explosion. An explosion does not propagate and reproduce over vast areas, spreading from person to person, either.

So if they don't know there is an attack, how can they mount a response? Which should be the first to know, the Department of Homeland (In)seucrities, or the Health Department or the DOJ? How can we tell a virulent natural outbreak from a case of bioterror? Either would be deadly.