Discussion: smallpox

They don't do smallpox vaccinations any more because nobody anywhere on the planet has had smallpox since this guy
in the fall of 1977 (except for two people who got it due to a lab accident in 1978). The vaccination program worked. We won.

Some of us still get the vaccine. Guess it could get out of a lab some day and into the wrong hands.

Really? I thought the vaccine was unavailable, but I guess that changed due to recent concerns about biological warfare? All of the remaining virus stocks are now in two secure locations, and they keep scheduling a date to destroy it all, but the date keeps getting postponed.

I don't know the history of military smallpox vaccines, but things pop up in the news.

And here's more.

I had to get re-vaccinated when I was working in a lab that studied vaccinia virus (the basis of the small pox vaccine). But that was ~20 years ago; don't know if they still do that.

Oh, right, I forgot -- to protect you from smallpox, they don't give you smallpox, they give you cowpox. Which is why the word "vaccine" looks like the Spanish, French, etc. words for "cow".

I assume they could continue to vaccinate well after the remaining virus stocks are destroyed, just for fun.

They can do that, since the vaccine is made from a different virus, but there are downsides to doing so, since there are (rare) serious side effects, and there's not really any point in protecting people against something that they can't encounter. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. As Mary points out, the smallpox vaccine also protects you against something else (vaccinia), though it's far less serious.