Are You Going to Get Your Smallpox Shot?

[CoolidgEffect]

Actually, after smallpox was eradicated from the natural world (along with polio one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of medicine and public health), there were only two known remaining samples of smallpox, one at the CDC in Atlanta keep in its level 5 basement lab under double negative pressure (the same maximum security lab were Marburg and Ebola are kept). The other was at one of the Soviet bioweapons labs. Both sides claimed they only kept the samples for future use to produce vaccine in case the other used smallpox as a bioweapon

When the USSR disintegrated and was no longer able to pay its bioweapons scientists, it was thought that some of them profited by selling smallpox samples to interested parties who wanted first rate biological weapons.

This idea of two samples misleading.

The idea of future use as a weapon might be correct, but past and present use in the lab for experimentation is also correct. A sample is maintained by the CDC, but scientists have had access to it in the past and will continue to have access. Thus other labs besides the CDC in the US have samples.

 

[Harbinger]

Done that.

I was just re-vaccinated two months ago as part of a DOD study of the vaccine prior to it's reissue. This study also included the new vaccine that is different from the one that was used when some of us were kids.

I had very minimal symtoms, probably because I was vaccinated when I was a child. Some of the participants in a different group of previously unvaccinnated subjects, who were too young to have been vacinated as kids, had more noticeable symptoms, but no one had any serious problems with it.

My understanding is that your immunity will typically begin to diminish 5 - 10 years after vacination. How long immunity lasts, and how vigorous the immune response is will vary widely from person to person.

Given the potential risks, I can see why you would want to protect key medical and military personnel from infection. As far as the general population goes, I think it may prove to not be necessary.