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Comment by jayflux | Hacker News Reader

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jayflux·

> A smallpox pandemic would be orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID

Edit: fair enough there’s no vaccinations for smallpox anymore. But countries do still buy stockpiles

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Childhood vaccinations against smallpox in the US stopped in 1971, 50 years ago.

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/49/...

Given that widespread vaccination for smallpox stopped in the 70's, I guess responding to a large outbreak would be a big problem. I'd hope we've got lots of smallpox vaccine stockpiled, though.

We have enough stockpiled to vaccinate every single person in the US [0].

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/bioterrorism-response-planning/...

No they don't, at least in the US. Older people may still be vaccinated in their youth (I guess when born before 1980s).

They stopped vaccinating against smallpox in 1972[1]. It was administered around 12 months of age before then. So anyone in the US born in 1972 or later is most likely unvaccinated.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/vaccine-basics/index.html

[2] https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-cent...

I don't think universal smallpox vaccination for infants is the case in any country now, at least since the 1980's.

> People still get vaccinated against smallpox when they’re young

No, they don't. I do not think there is even a single country that routinely vaccinates children against smallpox.

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