Quo Vadis GOP?

[viper37]

Well what if you make an informed choice to infect yourself with small pox and kill millions?

is it still lethal to most humans or didn't we develop immunity a while ago?

[grumbler]

Well what if you make an informed choice to infect yourself with small pox and kill millions?

is it still lethal to most humans or didn't we develop immunity a while ago?

It had a mortality rate of 30% (higher in some groups) but was eradicated.  In the sense that it was eradicated, we developed immunity.

[crazy canuck]

It still exists in labs though.  And you will be even less assured when you learn one of those labs is in Russia.

The premise of question is what would occur if someone injected themselves with it.  Since no one has been inoculated against it for a number of decades, it probably would kill millions.

[Malthus]

I learned something interesting the other day: there was a medical procedure that preceded vaccination to deal with smallpox. An extremely terrifying one, called "variolation".

Way it worked was this: the doctor would collect pus and scabs from someone with a mild case of smallpox, dry the stuff out, and grind it up. Then the doc would scratch the person to be protected's skin, and rub the powder in. In theory, this would give the person a *mild* case of smallpox (low vaccine load, via contact rather than inhalation, from a person who also had a mild case) ... though it was, as you can imagine, quite risky.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation

[Berkut]

I learned something interesting the other day: there was a medical procedure that preceded vaccination to deal with smallpox. An extremely terrifying one, called "variolation".

Way it worked was this: the doctor would collect pus and scabs from someone with a mild case of smallpox, dry the stuff out, and grind it up. Then the doc would scratch the person to be protected's skin, and rub the powder in. In theory, this would give the person a *mild* case of smallpox (low vaccine load, via contact rather than inhalation, from a person who also had a mild case) ... though it was, as you can imagine, quite risky.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation

It's not really all that terrifying at all, and is actually a pretty logical early step in the process that would lead to the development of modern vaccines. Once you understand and note that

A) People who have a disease don't get it again, and

B) Some people get very mild versions of the disease

Well, it seems pretty obvious from there for the scientifically minded.

And variolation worked quite well for the times. It actually was not that risky once the technique was refined and better understood.

[The Larch]

Primitive forms of vaccination similar to that variolation process were part of traditional African medicine when they were being discovered by Westerners, in fact a smallpox outbreak in Boston in the early XVIIIth was heavily mitigated thanks to the African slave of a puritan minister in Massachussets who taught him the procedure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onesimus_(Bostonian)#Inoculation_advocacy_and_controversy

Edit: woops, just saw that it's mentioned in the article posted by Malthus. 

[Malthus]

I learned something interesting the other day: there was a medical procedure that preceded vaccination to deal with smallpox. An extremely terrifying one, called "variolation".

Way it worked was this: the doctor would collect pus and scabs from someone with a mild case of smallpox, dry the stuff out, and grind it up. Then the doc would scratch the person to be protected's skin, and rub the powder in. In theory, this would give the person a *mild* case of smallpox (low vaccine load, via contact rather than inhalation, from a person who also had a mild case) ... though it was, as you can imagine, quite risky.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation

It's not really all that terrifying at all, and is actually a pretty logical early step in the process that would lead to the development of modern vaccines. Once you understand and note that

A) People who have a disease don't get it again, and

B) Some people get very mild versions of the disease

Well, it seems pretty obvious from there for the scientifically minded.

And variolation worked quite well for the times. It actually was not that risky once the technique was refined and better understood.

Terrifying to me. 😄

I mean, as a patient, you are risking that your physician had prepared the stuff properly, that you will in fact get a *mild* form of a disease that can be fatal.

Obviously, as with any medical procedure, the risk has to be weighed against the benefit - and the procedure was definitely a net benefit once well understood, in that if smallpox was about you would be better off on average by doing it than not doing it. The procedure did work, but as with any procedure, it had risks - actual vaccination works better and has less risks; but certainly for its time, variolation was an effective and life-saving technique. On average. 

I'd never heard of that before, I had wrongly assumed that before vaccination there was no preventive that actually worked. So it was a pretty interesting new fact to learn.

[Berkut]

I learned something interesting the other day: there was a medical procedure that preceded vaccination to deal with smallpox. An extremely terrifying one, called "variolation".

Way it worked was this: the doctor would collect pus and scabs from someone with a mild case of smallpox, dry the stuff out, and grind it up. Then the doc would scratch the person to be protected's skin, and rub the powder in. In theory, this would give the person a *mild* case of smallpox (low vaccine load, via contact rather than inhalation, from a person who also had a mild case) ... though it was, as you can imagine, quite risky.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation

It's not really all that terrifying at all, and is actually a pretty logical early step in the process that would lead to the development of modern vaccines. Once you understand and note that

A) People who have a disease don't get it again, and

B) Some people get very mild versions of the disease

Well, it seems pretty obvious from there for the scientifically minded.

And variolation worked quite well for the times. It actually was not that risky once the technique was refined and better understood.

Terrifying to me. 😄

I mean, as a patient, you are risking that your physician had prepared the stuff properly, that you will in fact get a *mild* form of a disease that can be fatal.

Obviously, as with any medical procedure, the risk has to be weighed against the benefit - and the procedure was definitely a net benefit once well understood, in that if smallpox was about you would be better off on average by doing it than not doing it. The procedure did work, but as with any procedure, it had risks - actual vaccination works better and has less risks; but certainly for its time, variolation was an effective and life-saving technique. On average. 

I'd never heard of that before, I had wrongly assumed that before vaccination there was no preventive that actually worked. So it was a pretty interesting new fact to learn.

I don't really consider it as seperate from vaccination - rather it is just the more primitive version of vaccination.

I mean, the basic theory is the same - except that they are using a (hopefully) mild version transmitted in a less dangerous (lower viral load) manner then the normal course of the disease.

[Jacob]

[Razgovory]

Is the GOP the French Republic?

[Admiral Yi]

Jim Boehner would disagree about that first frame.

[viper37]

It still exists in labs though.  And you will be even less assured when you learn one of those labs is in Russia.

The premise of question is what would occur if someone injected themselves with it.  Since no one has been inoculated against it for a number of decades, it probably would kill millions.

a quick read suggests there are exisiting vaccines (haven't checked their efficiency) and I'm pretty sure I was vaccinated against this as a kid.

[viper37]

Terrifying to me. 😄

I mean, as a patient, you are risking that your physician had prepared the stuff properly, that you will in fact get a *mild* form of a disease that can be fatal.

Yeah, totally terrifying.  Even more so than buying some chemical component designed to create hallucinations from a dude you barely know sitting at some street corner who got it from another dude who got it from a shady lab with naked working ladies (to prevent product theft) and a doubtful hygiene of the place compared to the usual sterilization of medical objects.

[Barrister]

It still exists in labs though.  And you will be even less assured when you learn one of those labs is in Russia.

The premise of question is what would occur if someone injected themselves with it.  Since no one has been inoculated against it for a number of decades, it probably would kill millions.

a quick read suggests there are existing vaccines (haven't checked their efficiency) and I'm pretty sure I was vaccinated against this as a kid.

I'm positive that since smallpox was declared eliminated they no longer inoculate kids against it.  It wasn't amongst the various vaccines my kids were given.

You and I are old enough we may well have received the vaccine though.  That was around the time it was declared eliminated.

Edit: or maybe not - wasn't that the vaccine that caused a kind of divot scar in the upper arm you sometimes see in older people?

[crazy canuck]

It still exists in labs though.  And you will be even less assured when you learn one of those labs is in Russia.

The premise of question is what would occur if someone injected themselves with it.  Since no one has been inoculated against it for a number of decades, it probably would kill millions.

a quick read suggests there are exisiting vaccines (haven't checked their efficiency) and I'm pretty sure I was vaccinated against this as a kid.

I was too, but that was prior to it being declared eliminated.