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I can't find the scar any more. I cannot remember the inoculation which gave me the scar.
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| Got scar? |
If you are of my generation and older, you probably have the same thing. If you are some 20 years younger than me, likely you don't.
I refer you here to the Smallpox vaccination.
Aside from a few cultures stored in Russia and the Centers for Disease Control, it's widely believed smallpox no longer exists on the planet.
To date, the last known case of smallpox occurred in Somalia on October 26, 1977 in the Merca District. The World Health Organization declared smallpox eradicated in 1979. The international Rotary Club is working hard to eradicate polio, again with Africa being the place where the disease has its holdout. That's also where smallpox was last seen (see above).
Comes news now that another disease has been eliminated - rinderpest. You may be excused for not knowing what this disease is. It's a cattle disease. Again, Africa was the place where the disease made its last stand.
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| Not all virii look like this. |
I question if it is really gone. I question if smallpox is gone (forget about the lab samples for a moment.)
Last time I checked, scientists were split on how to categorize a virus. Is it alive? It's certainly not dead, but it does lack some of the critical components for life, i.e. it does not consume and cannot reproduce under it's own power.
But it certainly does reproduce.
I have some theories about this, none of which I shall go into here.
Here's my problem - I think some eggs are being counted as fried chicken.
A virus ranges from being tough enough to withstand being in outer space to being so fragile simple exposure to the elements on a kitchen table for a few minutes will kill it.
"Viruses can survive almost anywhere, so I presume that can survive in space as well, as long as the exposure is relatively short. The issue with viruses is whether a host cell can also survive, since a virus depends for reproduction on its ability to invade a host cell and preempt its nuclear and metabolic machinery." David Morrison NAI Senior Scientist
Yassee what I'm driving at?
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| No hot wings yet... |
A virus can be tough. They can live in the soil for a long time. Other critters can host a virus without being made sick by it.
In the case of rinderpest, the world has several forms of wild cattle. Are they susceptible to rinderpest? There are also domestic cattle turned feral all over the place too.
Beyond rinderpest, could smallpox be lurking somewhere out there? Could be that some primates in Africa or S. America have some smallpox exposure and harbor the virus. The same with polio.
"eliminated" is a null term used by scientists and politicians to make "not currently active" sound better. I am pretty sure that all the eradicated viruses out there are still around somewhere. Like you pointed out, there are a lot of places for them to hide. Hells, viruses can lay dormant in humans and animals for decades. I read recently that Scarlet Fever was making a come back. Last time I thought of SF was when I watched Little House on the Prairie and Mary went blind because she had contracted the disease earlier. ( I sniffled for a week). In FRIDAY, RAH wrote about a massive outbreak of Bubonic Plague a century or so after it had been "eliminated" so anything is possible.
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