500 Million, But Not a Single One More

https://laneless.substack.com/p/500-million-but-not-a-single-one-more

by Smaug123 • 2 years ago

76 6 2 years ago

laneless.substack.com

pimlottc• 2 years ago

Smallpox. It's about the eradication of smallpox.

koliber• 2 years ago

Reading this story made me hungry for the answer, and it felt good to get it at the end. It would be a more boring story if the disease was stated at the top.

pcdoodle• 2 years ago

500 Million is also the figure quoted on the Georgia Guidestones which are no longer a thing :)

teslabox• 2 years ago

Smallpox was able to be eradicated because it’s a disease that people only get once, and which does not have an animal reservoire.

The smallpox vaccine was intradermal, rather than intramuscular. Resistance to inoculation was reduced because it was just a scratch, rather than an injection.

The elimination project concentrated its efforts on outbreaks. Dr. William H. Foege developed a “ring vaccination” strategy to target vaccination around outbreaks rather than mass vaccination.

hiyer• 2 years ago

They did mass vaccination too, at least here in India. They stopped before I was born, but my elder brother got the vaccine long after we'd had the last case of Smallpox in India.

credit_guy• 2 years ago

Nice story. Here's two little tidbits regarding humanity's fight against smallpox. Catherine the Great let herself be "variolated" in 1768 by Thomas Dimsdale. Following her example, two million Russians underwent the procedure in the next 3 decades [1]. On the other side of the world, George Washington mandated this procedure to all his soldiers in 1777 [2]. Some people think this contributed to the colonists eventual victory against the British.

[1] https://historyofvaccines.org/blog/empress-immunization-how-...

[2] https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/smallpox-inoculation-revolu...

500 Million, But Not a Single One More

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