3 ms·
Some things to note about variolation wrt Coronavirus: - About a 2% death rate when used with Smallpox (compared to 20-30% without variolation), so we could ex
by peterwwillis 6y ago
Some things to note about variolation wrt Coronavirus:
- About a 2% death rate when used with Smallpox (compared to 20-30% without variolation), so we could expect mortalities from variolation with Coronavirus.
- You actually get infected with the virus, and are contagious, though the effects are lowered and you gain an immunity to the stronger/regular virus. So you'd still need to self-quarantine and people would need to still wear masks/do social distancing and close places with lots of people.
- zbjornson 6y agoThere's no reason to expect any parallels between variolation with these two unrelated viruses.
- ggreer 6y agoIf you read Robin Hanson's blog post on the topic[1], he found data on other diseases: > The most directly relevant data is on SARS[2] and measles[3], where natural differences in doses were associated with factors of 3 and 14 in death rates, and[4] in[5] smallpox, where in the 1700s low “variolation” doses given on purpose cut death rates by a factor of 10 to 30. It looks like the initial dose size has a huge impact on mortality for a wide range of diseases. 1. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/variolation-may-cut-covid19-deaths-3-30x.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/variolation-may-cut-co... 2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3367618/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3367618/ 3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3723239/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3723239/ 4. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/smallpox/sp_variolation.html https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/smallpox/sp_variolation.h... 5. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/02/01/582370199/whats-the-real-story-about-the-milkmaid-and-the-smallpox-vaccine https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/02/01/5823701...