Reflections on smallpox

As part of getting ready for deployment, Rudi recently was vaccinated against smallpox. For those of you who haven't been vaccinated (I haven't either, so I have no first-hand experience) or who don't know about the vaccine, it is different than your standard "shot." The vaccine is administered by poking a vaccine-dipped, solid, two-prong needle in the upper arm 15 times in rapid succession. Afterwards, if you are appropriately developing immunity to smallpox, your arm will develop an itchy, fairly large, nasty blister at the vaccination site. This will eventually scab over and then leave a scar. If you're interested in details on the immunization, check the CDC site on it here.

I have posted pictures of Rudi's smallpox vaccination site below. His vaccination site has been so itchy that it wakes him up at night sometimes. He shows me the blister from time to time, and it is dramatic--oozing, pus-filled. This solitary spot on Rudi's arm serves as a reminder of the disease that covered its victims with hundreds of such disfiguring, painful, oozing wounds. And as if that wasn't enough, estimates are that 30-60% of the victims, as if they hadn't suffered enough, were killed outright from this virus. 

We googled smallpox and found gruesome images of children covered in the lesions. I am not being morbid for fun--I think it is important for us to remember that vaccines have rid the world of this disease! And also thanks to the smallpox vaccine, the general population doesn't even have to go through the discomfort of getting vaccinated against the disease anymore.

Vaccines have received a lot of negative press recently due to their supposed causal relationship with autism (however, a recent study again showed no link between MMR vaccine and autism), so I think it is important to remember that a terrible and painful pathogen has been eliminated from the planet thanks to vaccination! Sure, any medical treatment should be re-examined continually to ensure that it is not causing undue harm. However, I have heard too many people say, "what's so bad about the measles...." I won't go into the measles (or any of the other vaccine-preventable illnesses), but I would just like to highlight the smallpox vaccine as an example of how privileged we are to live in a post-vaccination era. 

Click here for a brief overview of how smallpox affected the world throughout known history.