"Richard Preston - The Demon In The Freezer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preston Richard)

ampules of the Russian vaccine to the Geneva airport-one hundred thousand doses took up almost no
space. The vaccine did not need to be kept frozen, because after it was thawed it would remain potent
for weeks. Thousands of smallpox-vaccination needles were also shipped to Germany. They were a
special type of forked needle called a bifurcated needle, which has twin prongs.
As quickly as possible, the German health authorities organized a mass vaccination for smallpox
all around the Meschede area. This was known as a ring-vaccination containment. The smallpox
doctors intended to encircle Peter Los and his contacts with a firewall of immunized people, so that the
tiny blaze of variola at the center would not find any more human tinder and would not roar to life in its
host species.
Meschede came to a halt. People left their jobs and homes, and lined up at schools to be
vaccinated, bringing their children with them. A fear of pox - a Pocken-angst - spread across Germany
faster than the virus. People who drove in cars with license plates from Meschede found that gas stations
wouldn't serve them, nor would restaurants. Meschede had become a city of pox.
Nurses and doctors gave out the vaccine. A person who was working as a vaccinator would
stand by the line of people, holding a glass ampule of the vaccine and a small plastic holder full of
bifurcated needles. The vaccinator would break the neck of the ampule and shake a needle out of the
holder. She would dip the needle into the vaccine and then jab it into a person's upper arm about fifteen
times, making bloody pricks. You could have blood running down your arm if the vaccination was done
correctly, for the bifurcated needle had to break the skin thoroughly. Each glass ampule was good for at
least twenty vaccinations. As people passed in the line, a vaccinator could do huneds of vaccinations in
an hour. Each needle was put into a container after it had been used on one person. At the end of the
day, all the flees were boiled and sterilized to be used again the next day. Each successfully vaccinated
person became infected with vaccinia. They developed a single pustule on the upper arm at the site of
the vacation. The pustule was an ugly blister that leaked pus, and oozed and crusted, and many people
felt woozy and a little feverish for a couple of days afterward, for vaccinia was replicating in their skin,
and it is not a very nice virus. Meanwhile, their immune systems went into states of screaming alarm.
Vaccinia and smallpox are so much alike that our immune systems have trouble telling them apart. Within
days, a vaccinated person's resistance to smallpox begins to rise. Today, many adults over age thirty
have a scar on their upper arm, which is the pockmark left by the pustule of a smallpox vaccination that
they received in childhood, and some adults can remember how much the pustule hurt. Unfortunately,
the immune system's "memory" of the vaccinia infection fades, and the vaccination begins to wear off after
about five years. Today, almost everyone who was vaccinated against smallpox in childhood has lost
much or all of their immunity to it.
The traditional smallpox vaccine is thought to offer protective power up to four days after a
person has inhaled the virus. It is like the abies vaccine: if you are bitten by a mad dog, you can get the
rabies vaccine, and you'll probably be okay. Similarly, if someone near you is smallpox and you can get
the vaccine right away, you'll have a better chance of escaping infection, or if you do catch smallpox,
you'll halve a better chance of survival. But the vaccine is useless if given more than four to five days
after exposure to the virus, because by then the virus will have amplified itself in the body past the point at
which the immune system can kick in fast enough to stop it. The doctors had started vaccinating people
at St. Walberga Hospital five and six days after Peter Los had been admitted. They were closing the
barn door just after the horse had gone.
The incubation period of smallpox virus is eleven to fourteen days, and it hardly varies much from
person to person. Variola operates on a strict timetable as it amplifies itself inside a human being.


The Student Nurse
JANUARY 22, 1970

Eleven days after Peter Los arrived at St. Walberga Hospital, a young woman who had been