3 ms·
Polio didn't stop. Smallpox is not extinct.
by rhizome 6y ago
Polio didn't stop. Smallpox is not extinct.
- ashtonkem 6y agoWe have vaccines for those.
- govg 6y agoThere are like a couple of hundred cases of Polio every year in the world and for all practical purposes Small pox is extinct.
- adwn 6y ago> Smallpox is not extinct. I beg to differ: "Through the success of the global eradication campaign, smallpox was finally pushed back to the horn of Africa and then to a single last natural case, which occurred in Somalia in 1977. A fatal laboratory-acquired case occurred in the United Kingdom in 1978. The global eradication of smallpox was certified, based on intense verification activities in countries, by a commission of eminent scientists in December 1979 and subsequently endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 1980." (from https://web.archive.org/web/20070921235036/http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070921235036/http://www.who.in... ) The Wikipedia page starts with "Smallpox was an infectious disease". I believe this is one of the most powerful sentences I've ever read on the Internet, and it gives me so much hope for what we can achieve.
- eatbitseveryday 6y agoSmallpox is not extinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_virus_retention_contr... > The debate centers on whether or not the last two remnants of the virus known to cause smallpox, which are kept in tightly controlled government laboratories in the United States and Russia, should finally and irreversibly be destroyed.
- rhizome 6y agoYep.