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A 300-Year-Old Tale of One Woman's Quest to Stop a Deadly Virus
- a_imho 5y agoIt looks like someone at npr caught up with the perfectly functioning and compliant text only option.
- worg 5y agoit's still working for me, maybe a temporary issue? https://text.npr.org/972978143 https://text.npr.org/972978143
- Vecr 5y agoI'm not sure why they put "a Deadly Virus" in the title, not "a Smallpox Epidemic". Is smallpox as a concept becoming an obscure thing?
- shrx 5y ago"Deadly virus" gets more clicks.
- donohoe 5y agoIt’s not inaccurate so that’s good, and don’t see it being misleading either way
- inglor_cz 5y agoThe vast majority of the world's population was born after smallpox was eradicated in the wild. IDK how many people out of 10 would correctly answer the question "what was smallpox and what was its cause"? One in ten?
- Y-Bopinator 5y agoI may be a zoomer but im pretty sure smallpox is a punk rock band and not a virus
- gus_massa 5y agoLooking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication in most parts of the word it spread until 1960-1970, so I expect most people with more than 60 years old to know. From https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure the 65+ group is 10% of the current population. I'm younger, but I remember horror stories from my parents about smallpox and polio (mostly about polio). My children, ... I don't know. I can check later, but I guess my older daughter know, but's perhaps it's like horror stories about her grandparent epoch. Perhaps we should pick a day and make a big annual commemoration worldwide. Somewhat relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2448/ https://xkcd.com/2448/
- chasil 5y agoLet me tell you all about that, in a much more coherent article. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/
- AlexCoventry 5y agoI don't see anything incoherent about the OP article. It's just more tightly focused on Montague's role.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoAnything with "pox" in the name, should give a hint.
- IncRnd 5y agoThey obviously did that to increase the click count.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoFolks kind of know that smallpox was a problem, but a lot of folks don't have any personal reference for it nor have any real reference for how deadly it was. The US stopped routine vaccinations for it in 1972, after all, and they cheered when they declared it eradicated in 1980. Multiple generations have been born since then. A few folks born after it was eradicated are grandparents now. Honestly, syphilis has a similar story and it is still around: Sure, there is some shame around it, much like other STDs, but we can cure it. And wow, it is a horrible disease, eating away at folks.
- AlexCoventry 5y ago"Deadly virus" will attract more attention than "smallpox epidemic" because it highlights the parallels with the coronavirus pandemic.
- redis_mlc 5y agoFauci is probably funding a smallpox revival too. Shhh!
- mxcrossr 5y ago> "We don't know exactly why or how it works, we just know that it does work," says Michael Kinch, an associate vice chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis who has written a book on vaccination. Kinch and others suspect this form of inoculation may have worked because it introduced the smallpox virus through the skin, rather than the lungs. This is really interesting, I wonder if we have any evidence of similar behavior of other viruses?
- TheBigSalad 5y agoIt's insane that we don't know this. Are we not studying this?
- morninglight 5y agoThis is how popular culture dealt with a virus in 1950. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5v3tkZ8fiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5v3tkZ8fiQ
- modularform12 5y agoIt was only a year ago that 'journalists', including NPR, were telling us that discussion of medical interventions outside of the mainstream consensus was dangerous and should be censored.
- nnx 5y agoTen Drugs by Thomas Hager has a fascinating chapter about Lady Mary Montagu’s story. https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Drugs-Powders-History-Medicine/dp/1419734407 https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Drugs-Powders-History-Medicine/dp...
- andred14 5y agoHow about you just quit ly1ng to us about v1ruses ok? THERE IS NO PROOF AT ALL THAT ANY VIRUSES EXIST UNLESS SOMEONE CAN SHOW SOME?? https://www.bitchute.com/video/Dxa1B39cLewh/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/Dxa1B39cLewh/