Update: Tularemia picked up by Washington DC bioterrorism sensors

[Gogi]

Just watched The Jaco Report, he interviewed Dr. William Stanhope at St. Louis University's internationally renowned Center for Biosecurity. Here's the gist of what was said in the report:

1.Two people who attended the march have been hospitalized with something suspiciously like tularemia (rabbit fever).

2.12 more people have reported tularemia-like symptoms.

3.Six widely seperated biosensors in Washington, DC picked up tularemia. According to Dr. Stanhope this cannot occur naturally as tularemia is not normally found in DC, it is much more common in MO and AR.

4.Tularemia is a biological weapon of choice because it is easily transmitted and can make many, many people sick very quickly.

5.Was this a failed attack, terrorists testing the system or is it related to a three day bioterrorism commando exercise that took place just before the march called 'Operation Granite Shield'?

6.Why did the Dept. of Homeland Security wait three days to tell the CDC and why did the CDC wait three days to inform public health officials and doctors?

[WolverineDG]

1. not sure, gogi

:shrug:

Only 14 people w/possible cases of tularemia out of the 300-500K folks who showed up to march is a pretty pitiful statistic for a disease described as "highly infectious." If they intentionally released tularemia in the hopes that we'd all fall down dead, I'd say they failed.

According to the CDC FAQ, http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/tularemia/faq.asp the bacteria that causes tularemia can remain alive for weeks in water & soil. Has there been an outbreak of tularemia of any size in the DC area?

dg

[Gogi]

2. No, because tularemia is hardly ever found outside the midwest,

mostly found in MO and AR. Dr. Stanhope says the point would be to use an agent that would make enough people sick quickly so as to create panic. I'm a native Missourian so I may very well be immune to it! Tularemia is rarely fatal and the fact that few people apparently got sick may just mean a lot of marchers may have thought they had the flu or it was a botched attempt. The CDC did'nt jump on it so now it can never be definitively proven one way or the other.:shrug:

[WolverineDG]

3. well, according to the DU DQs

if you don't treat tularemia, you die. ;) it doesn't make sense for whoever wanted to create panic by killing off demostrators to poison their own well by contaminating DC w/tularemia. there would be too many people they'd have to keep "safe" by putting them on antibiotics...someone is bound to talk about it at some point. i think one of the other explanations-that the bacteria is present in DC & was kicked up by the 600K-1mil feet tromping around DC that day-is more plausible, esp. since there doesn't appear to be a mysterious outbreak of tularemia in DC itself.

dg