small pox

[punter]

One of the many things that we are told about vaccinations is that
they eradicated small pox.

But this just doesn't make much sense to me.

We are told that people can have the germ and spread it around without
having any symptoms (see for example Katie's discussion about Hep B
carriers) these people are called asymptomatic carriers.

So what I want to know is. If there could have been thousands, perhaps
millions even of people walking around in the 1960s and 70s with small
pox virus but no apparent symptoms, how could the authorities have
possibly known that it had been eradicated? Did they test every single
person on the planet? What about all the trees, rocks, animals etc
that might have harboured it too? And if the test is unreliable (both
providing false positives and negatives) how could it possibly have
informed them that it had been eradicated?

How did they know? Were they omniscient? Or was it a complete
fabrication? Did they simply assume that from that point on all cases
of small pox would be treated as something else (say fatal chicken
pox) and so the whole thing became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[JHH]

I believe I can provide an answer to that query Punter.  The small pox virus (variola) has no vectors other than humans. It survived only because it could be passed from human to human. The world wide mass vaccination program reduced it's only habitat to zero. http://www.emedicinehealth.com/smallpox/page2_em.htm 

[JHH]

On Tuesday, 6 March 2012 16:48:29 UTC+11, punter wrote:

Small pox virus was totally dependent on humans for it's survival. It was a species specific virus. In order to reproduce it had to infect a human and cause disease. That human could then infect other humans thus ensuring it's continued existence. The herculean effort of world wide mass vaccination reduced it's habitat (humans with small pox) so catastrophically it went extinct. Humans being challenged by the virus were not getting the disease ergo virus could not reproduce itself. We could use an animal model to demonstrate what I'm getting at. The Koala only eats leaves from specific species of eucalyptus. Take away the trees it needs for nutrition and the Koala becomes extinct..... Same mechanism at work.

[JHH]

Small pox virus was totally dependent on humans for it's survival. It was a species specific virus. In order to reproduce it had to infect a human and cause disease. That human could then infect other humans thus ensuring it's continued existence. The herculean effort of world wide mass vaccination reduced it's habitat (humans with small pox) so catastrophically it went extinct. Humans being challenged by the virus were not getting the disease ergo virus could not reproduce itself. We could use an animal model to demonstrate what I'm getting at. The Koala only eats leaves from specific species of eucalyptus. Take away the trees it needs for nutrition and the Koala becomes extinct.

On Tuesday, 6 March 2012 16:48:29 UTC+11, punter wrote:

[punter]

“Small pox virus was totally dependent on humans for it's survival.”

 

Sigh! That’s the hypothesis JHH. I don’t want you to restate it for me I want the evidence that it is so- and a link to a site that also just restates the hypothesis doesn’t count.

 

I will repeat again: Given that viruses are very small, how could any mere mortal possibly say with a straight face that there are precisely zero occurrences (barring biological weapons labs) of it on a planet the size of Earth?

 

What you have given me is wild speculation not established facts.

 

“Humans being challenged by the virus were not getting the disease ergo virus could not reproduce itself.”

 

Really? So if you don’t get the disease you can’t be a carrier? So obviously you must agree with me on the innocence of Typhoid Mary or people who supposedly infect others with HIV then? Or are you just saying this principle is true for smallpox and smallpox alone in which case see my above statement re established facts vs wild speculation?

 

“We could use an animal model to demonstrate what I'm getting at. The Koala only eats leaves from specific species of eucalyptus. Take away the trees it needs for nutrition and the Koala becomes extinct..... Same mechanism at work.”

 

Like I said, I’m less concerned about the coherence of the hypothesis than its arbitrariness (although your analogy is an odd one).

 

Here is my explanation: the smallpox vaccine was extremely dangerous and even though doctors are unbelievably good at turning a blind eye to vaccine damage even they couldn’t escape the fact that it was causing a great deal of harm. Depending on what mood I am in I could be kind to doctors and say they were deeply concerned about the welfare of their fellow man. Alternatively, if I have just read some of the stuff written by doctors on the SAVN site I might be more inclined to think that they were simply worried about the opposition that the smallpox shot was engendering to their entire program. Regardless, they clearly wanted an out – be it consciously or unconsciously – from the smallpox shot.

 

The idea that they could “eradicate” the disease must have very sweet music to their ears – meaning they could end the awful vaccine and at the same time have a massive propaganda boost for the rest of their criminal program. And no, I don’t think that there was a grand conspiracy for this, merely that things just fell in a manner that suited everybody and so nobody raised a hand and said: “Hang on! This is completely ridiculous. No mere mortal could possibly make such a grandiose claim – at the very least we should wait a decade or two before we can categorically say that smallpox has gone forever rather than trumpet it far and wide while there are still people infected with the disease!”

 

But nobody did. Standing up and stating the bleeding obvious when the fantasy is so appealing is probably the most difficult thing in the world.

[flock...@gmail.com]

Punter, It is good to see you engaged ad asking questions.  I have been thinking about Smallpox.  In 1967 the World Health Organisaiton set a plan to eradicte the world of the disease.  The confirmation of the eradiation 10 years later was a great outcome for science and relied heavily on social networks to communicate any instances of disease.  Since the eradication a scientific photographer, Janet Parker, died in 1978.

 

The AVN, on the other hand, has no plan to assist in the eradication of disease and is placing lives as risk.  Other impact of the AVN stance is a contributing factor to increasing the costs of health care delivery as more patients contracting preventatble diseases require treatment and more money is spent on education programs to counter the misinformation oozing from the AVN.

 

David Suzuki put it well on an interview recently when he observed that the claims of alternate views create "balance" with regards to global warming and clinate change are a fallacy as the opponets are not speaking in terms of evidence or orbserved facts.

 

.  

[punter]

Wow! David Suzuki said so! I had no idea that a complete fool who is wrong about everything disagreed with me on the nature of scientific debate. This changes....well...nothing actually.

"The confirmation of the eradiation 10 years later was a great outcome for science"

Did you not read my posts? There was no confirmation. Nobody other than a divine being could make such a thing. They wanted it gone and so they declared it gone that is all the evidence they had. We can speculate why they were so determined to make such a fabrication but we can't deny that a) they did; and b) the fact that the whole world fell for it just goes to show the value of popularity. Zero.