A person will _feel_ sick before they are transmissible. That doesn't prevent them from spreading it for a short time before the symptoms are more noticeable, but they are going to start feeling pretty bad. Plus the time is short 1-2 days, possibly a bit longer. It's not 2 weeks like the initial claim.
In short, yes there could be some spread this way but not much before more severe symptoms show, and not anything like 2 weeks.
Finally, the breathing of the victim is the most potent source of transmisability. You don't put the dried up pustules in your mouth do you? I'm not an expert, but the additional risk from non airborne sources is quite small!
Smallpox is only transmittable when you show symptoms. Thus, during the 2 week+ incubation period, your virus is not transmissible.
That would only give a fairly small window where you could transmit the virus, without having very obvious signs of infection.
That doesn't mean of course, that you couldn't spread it this way, but that it isn't quite as bad as you portray.
Basically, in any type of attack like this, the key is to expose as many people as possible in the first round. (Tom Clancy, as sucky as his latest books are now, covers a somewhat technically realistic Ebola attack - at least in the strategy of a wide initial round.) After the initial round or 2, the health community will rally and fairly quickly beat the thing, provided that the fabric of society doesn't break down first.
Thus, infecting as many people as possible in the first round is the most effective way to maximize the casualty list. The hard part is that there aren't too many diseases that are highly contageous, often fatal, and also transmitable while asymptomatic...nature (or God) may have given us a bit of a leg up here.
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Go do some research...
I didn't say pustules, I said _symptoms_.
A person will _feel_ sick before they are transmissible. That doesn't prevent them from spreading it for a short time before the symptoms are more noticeable, but they are going to start feeling pretty bad. Plus the time is short 1-2 days, possibly a bit longer. It's not 2 weeks like the initial claim.
In short, yes there could be some spread this way but not much before more severe symptoms show, and not anything like 2 weeks.
Finally, the breathing of the victim is the most potent source of transmisability. You don't put the dried up pustules in your mouth do you? I'm not an expert, but the additional risk from non airborne sources is quite small!
Smallpox is only transmittable when you show symptoms. Thus, during the 2 week+ incubation period, your virus is not transmissible.
That would only give a fairly small window where you could transmit the virus, without having very obvious signs of infection.
That doesn't mean of course, that you couldn't spread it this way, but that it isn't quite as bad as you portray.
Basically, in any type of attack like this, the key is to expose as many people as possible in the first round. (Tom Clancy, as sucky as his latest books are now, covers a somewhat technically realistic Ebola attack - at least in the strategy of a wide initial round.) After the initial round or 2, the health community will rally and fairly quickly beat the thing, provided that the fabric of society doesn't break down first.
Thus, infecting as many people as possible in the first round is the most effective way to maximize the casualty list. The hard part is that there aren't too many diseases that are highly contageous, often fatal, and also transmitable while asymptomatic...nature (or God) may have given us a bit of a leg up here.