From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Oct 18 2001 - 08:10:29 MDT
Ralph Lewis wrote:
>
> Bouvier & Grant in "How Many Americans?" , a Sierra Club Book (not noted as
> a right wing organization!) give a rough estimate of a substantiable
> population for the US as 180 million. We are at what over 250 million now? I
> doubt if even the worst anthrax bio war would get the number that far down!
280 million or so Americans at present, plus 9-30 million illegal
immigrants, plus 300 million temporary visitors annually (mostly
Canadians and Mexicans).
While Anthrax wouldn't likely hurt that bad, a good runaway smallpox
attack could wipe out a third of the population. Note that few Americans
under 25 have been immunized against smallpox, and normal smallpox
vaccines have limited efficacy against some weaponized smallpox
variants.
On that score, Bush is proposing spending $1.5 billion to build up a
stock of 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine. This many doses should
be effective against a major attack that initially infected several
thousand people or more (or multiple attacks).
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