Officials say it was NOT Small Pox after all:
HOLLYWOOD – Memorial Regional Hospital's emergency room was put under lockdown for a short time shortly after 7 Friday morning over worries a sick patient was suffering symptoms similar to smallpox, a hospital official said in an e-mail release.
Infectious disease experts at the 690-bed hospital and trauma center quickly confirmed that a patient complaining of a high fever and a skin rash was not suffering from deadly smallpox. They did not say what the patient suffered from.
As part of standard procedure, however, the hospital's emergency room was reported closed off for 30 to 45 minutes while doctors diagnosed the symptons.
Let's hope they are telling the truth. Of course, there is greater attention given to such stories these days, but I don't recall ever hearing of such a scare previously.
3 comments:
This is somethin I have been savin for a while.. I KNEW it would come in handy one day:
The Big Deal About Smallpox
August 17, 2005
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by Bob Newman
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The photos of the victims are horrifying.
With their bodies covered with huge pustules that will have left large craters in their skin forever (if they survived), the victims of smallpox suffered unimaginable agony. Along with the pus-filled lesions came crushing headaches, delirium, extensive bleeding, crippling backaches, chronic fatigue, unstoppable diarrhea and vomiting, bone infections, pneumonia, and fevers that oftentimes ran above 104 degrees.
Highly contagious, it is easily spread through droplets expelled by sneezing, coughing or breathing, and it can also be spread through contact with an item touched by an infected person, like a set of keys, cell phone, credit card or napkin.
In 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed to declare smallpox, a type of poxvirus, eradicated. The last known case in the public was in Africa in 1977. However, the virus is still maintained in two labs, one of which is in Russia.
Beginning shortly after the 2001 anthrax attacks, for which no one has been convicted, the United States government began stockpiling what has become a store of 180 million doses of full-strength smallpox vaccine. And now we have learned that the government has issued a "tender to buy" with two smallpox vaccine companies in Europe. According to the companies, the U.S. government wants 20 million doses of smallpox vaccine specifically tailored for the elderly and for those with weakened immune systems. These companies also say that the government informed them that an additional 60 million such doses might be required.
Why would the government do this when the disease was declared wiped out of the general populace a quarter of a century ago?
Because intelligence reports indicate the threat of smallpox being available on the black market. Other intelligence reports say al Qaeda is interested in this possibility and would like nothing better than to wipe out a staggering number of Americans without firing a shot, detonating a single bomb, or flying an aircraft into a building.
Variola major
is a dangerous form of smallpox that has a mortality rate of at least 30 percent. Think that’s bad? That’s nothing compared to "sledgehammer" smallpox, which has nearly a 100% mortality rate because it causes massive hemorrhaging not only from the skin lesions but from natural body orifices. This bleeding can not be stemmed and the victim dies.
So the situation is this: al Qaeda wants to conduct a bio attack on the United States with smallpox if it can get hold of some. Our intel says the virus may be available on the black market. Our intel also says al Qaeda has already ingressed into America via our open borders and knows how to continue to get into our country safely. We catch only about one-third of the illegal aliens who cross our southern border, and thousands upon thousands of "special interest aliens" (illegal aliens from one of the 35 countries on the U.S.’s list of terrorist-infested nations) have slipped into America in the last five years. And Congress and the president refuse to secure our borders because they are afraid of the economic impact on industries that rely heavily upon illegal immigrant labor, and those industries give massive contributions to the war chests of the Washington wusses. They refuse to do so in violation of their oaths of office.Now New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has declared a state of emergency in response to the near-total absence of federal border-security support and in part because doing so is a clever political move that helps Hillary Clinton in her make-over from a rabid liberal with tendencies toward unabashed socialism to a moderate conservative. Richardson easily embarrassed the president, got his state a nice chunk of federal change to hopefully beef up security along the New Mexico-Mexico border, and again ingratiated himself with Hillary.Can you say Vice President Richardson? Secretary of State Richardson? Ambassador Richardson?
Al Qaeda terrorists attempting to cross our border from Mexico are likely to use "coyotes," the professional smuggler-guides who conduct their operations with impunity both in America and Mexico. That must change. And the way to begin changing that is for the governors of our Southwestern border states to deploy law-enforcement and state military snipers along the border to conduct selective target acquisition (STA) missions. In other words, state police and National Guard snipers will shoot the coyotes dead, whether they come into the crosshairs in the United States or Mexico. Having just read that option, liberals are screaming bloody murder. They are shouting that a sniper can’t tell the difference between a man looking for a job and a coyote. They are wailing that shooting a Mexican national in Mexico, even if the man is a coyote, is murder and an act of war. They are squawking in protest that the plan smacks of racism. They are whining that such missions are not within the purview of the state police. And they are caterwauling that using National Guard troops to whack criminals is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
The leftists are wrong on all counts, of course.Snipers are highly trained to identify precisely who the bad guy is. Unless you have been a sniper or have operated with them, you might not know this.We are at war and the amazingly corrupt government of Mexico is assisting in an insurgency. Shooting insurgents is permitted by international law, whether that insurgent is in his home country or the country he is conducting illegal acts in.Race has nothing to do with this. It is simply a matter of security. The insurgents happen to be Hispanic.The state police of each state are sworn to stop crime. By shooting criminals involved in the insurgency, the cops are fulfilling their duties.If you read the Posse Comitatus Act, you will learn it does not say that a governor can not deploy his National Guard forces to prevent crime and restore order. In fact, the laws of every state say the governor can do precisely that.Marine snipers have a saying: You can run, but you’ll only die tired.
Lock and load.
Bob Newman
It's so horrible the mind can not help but turn away.
Hey I am gladdened that the hospital staff was alive to the symmptoms to ring the bell.
I think it speaks well for americans today that we are not yet numbed by the continuous alert status
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