That pic up top that started this thread ... while it's being presented as an instance of a bad reaction to smallpox vaccine, it looks like a nasty case of pink eye ...

Not all hospitals are on board with the vaccine.

Officials at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond said yesterday that the risk of dangerous side effects of the vaccine and inadvertent transmission to patients outweighs the remote threat of an attack with a virus that has not been seen since the 1970s.

Officials at three other large medical centers - Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Emory Medical Center in Atlanta, and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics - are leaning against inoculating their staffs.

Paranoia
 

You know, for all these worries about the smallpox vaccine, we seem to be forgetting that just about everyone older than myself was routinely vaccinated with it as an infant.

Our standards of risk have gotten much tighter in the past 30 years, and that's mostly a bad thing. But now the Nervous Nellies find themselves in a double-bind -- worry overmuch about a vaccine, or worry overmuch about biological warfare? Oh, the HANDWRINGING....

Me, I'm a fatalist. I figure that if someone does use smallpox as a biological weapon, they'll have engineered it to work in vaccinated individuals as well.

Re: Paranoia
 

Yep. And for about five years or so, we were all immune. Too bad the damn thing wears off, innit?