LUBENSTEIN, GOLDSTEIN, et al. When a single case of smallpox arrived in Manhattan in 1947, a severe outbreak was possible. Ring or massvaccination? Learn how the city successfully eradicated it. Am J Public Health Nations Health. A businessman from Mexico visiting New York City was found to be infected with the disease. The skin is not even broken by the needle. In 1947, a terrifying, deadly disease arrived in New York City: smallpox. Nine days after Le Bar’s death, the girl developed a rash, and was readmitted to the hospital; the diagnosis was chicken pox. Le Bar had a headache, sore throat, backache and rash, which he had been treating on the five-day bus trip with “large amounts” of a headache powder and aspirin. Before long, there is an outbreak of the disease in the city. Luckily, no cases were identified. This is frightening since there are cases of cancer appearing in smallpox vaccination scars. The outbreak seemed to have been halted by the practice of ring vaccination, in which anyone who had contact with infected individuals were immunized. Eugene Le Bar’s case was reevaluated and his skin lesions, indeed, proved to be smallpox. He became ill, was hospitalized, and, after his death, found to have had smallpox. Sepkowitz KA (2004). The deadly disease was defeated almost instantly. Imperato PJ. In March 1947, a patient who had recently visited Mexico traveled by bus to New York City. The Panic of 1947. In April 1947, during a smallpox outbreak in New York City (NYC), >6 million people were vaccinated. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. [Recent outbreak of smallpox in New York City]. Arch Pediatr. But even though science and medicine have significantly improved since 1947, we still have a limited set of responses to frightening outbreaks: vaccination, quarantine, and anti-infective drugs. 1947 Nov;37(11):1376-84. It is interesting to note that vaccine side effects were barely considered during this crisis. Smallpox, however, was not considered, mainly because the patient had a vaccination scar from childhood. His most recent book, Madoff With the Money, was excerpted in The Daily Beast. The study below indicates that mass vaccination may not be necessary. He stumbled off a bus, complaining of fever and a headache, and soon died in a Midtown Hospital, but not before he had infected a dozen passers-by. (It is not just because of the scar tissue, since I have a scar on the other arm and no problem with that one. To determine whether vaccination increased cardiac death, we reviewed NYC death certificates for comparable periods in 1946, 1947, and 1948 (N = 81,529) and calculated adjusted relative death rates for the postvaccination period. “What happened in New York City was successful because of federal, state, and local communication, voluntary vaccinations, and a public-information blitz–and that’s what’s needed in an any future potential pandemic, or epidemic,” says Judith W. Leavitt, professor of History of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin. If the arm becomes very sore, apply an icebag”. Attention-getters in the crowd included a woman carrying a live Easter bunny wearing a miniature version of its owner’s chapeau. WEINSTEIN I. PMID: 20268879 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] New York City, which is now grappling with the threat of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, in the last half-century faced—and conquered—an even greater and more frightening threat: smallpox, which is among the world’s most dreaded infectious diseases. To determine whether smallpox vaccination increased the risk for cardiac death in 1947, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) analyzed data from NYC … The campaign slogan was “Be sure, be safe, get vaccinated!”. When the rash continued to spread, stymied doctors grew concerned, and on March 8 he was transferred to the city’s communicable disease hospital, Willard Parker. The new one they are researching sounds like it could be safer, but sometimes you don't know about long term side effects. He became ill, was hospitalized, and, after his death, found to have had smallpox. A 1947 outbreak in New York City, traced back to a traveler from Mexico, resulted in a frantic effort to vaccinate 6 million people in four … An outbreak of smallpox in New York City. But New Yorkers’ festive post-war mood would soon change dramatically, for a monstrously fatal and highly contagious disease had quietly slipped into the city. The stimulus for this mass immunization was the importation of smallpox by a businessman who had acquired the disease during his travels. In April 1947, during a smallpox outbreak in New York City (NYC), more than 6 million people were vaccinated. The outbreak marked two milestones for America. But the situation worsened in New York and its environs. In order to contain this outbreak, the New York City Department of Health launched a … As Weinstein pointed out, “Never before had so many people in one city been vaccinated in such a short time and on such short notice,” averting “a major catastrophe…It is little short of remarkable that there were only 12 cases [and two deaths] in the entire outbreak.” Without the mass action, he declared, “there very likely would have been thousands of cases [of smallpox] and hundreds of deaths.”, “What happened in New York City was successful because of federal, state, and local communication, voluntary vaccinations, and a public information blitz—and that’s what’s needed in an any future potential pandemic, or epidemic,” asserts Judith W. Leavitt, professor of history of medicine at the University of Wisconsin.