Tactics readied for a smallpox fight. A centers for Disease Control conference, with many of the infectious disease experts who participated in the effort to eradicate smallpox more than twenty years ago, has pulled together a protocol to deal woth an outbreak scenario. The CDC will make the plan public in 2-3 weeks after final revisions by public health officials around the country. The controversial — and perhaps unworkable — aspect of the plan is to vaccinate not only the ring of people who had come in contact with an infected individual or individuals, but to identify and vaccinate a second ring — those who had come into contact with the first circle of people. CDC officials say it is essential. Boston Globe

Meanwhile, the Shrub administration seems intent on vaccinating the entire populace. HHS Sec’y Tommy Thompson is pushing pharmaceutical companies to gear up manufacture of smallpox vaccine to have enough on hand for everyone. Shrub revelaed during yesterday’s visit to the CDC in

Atlanta that he is considering making the immunization program compulsory Times of London, despite the fact that hundreds would likely die from the vaccinations themselves.Smallpox immunization ended in the US in 1972; studies vary on whether those vaccinated 30 years ago would have any lingering protection against new exposure. The last naturally occurring case of smallpox occurred in Somalia in 1977, although two English laboratory workers were infected with smallpox in 1978 after an accidental exposure. Current stockpiles of smallpox virus are known to exist only in the US and the former Soviet Union.