Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
It's never been successfully achieved with uncontrolled spread of a live virus through a population.
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Apart from Smallpox of course..
The question is how did we manage to eradicate Smallpox? This disease had the following qualities;
- Only human to human transmission (no animals involved)
- You only spread it when pretty sick and obviously had Smallpox (no asymptomatic carriers)
- The virus was very stable and didn't mutate over time
- There was a simple vaccine available in Vaccinia/Cowpox
Smallpox was one nasty disease so governments and, more importantly, the public were SUPER motivated not to have it spread so many countries had mandatory vaccination which had a very high degree of compliance (of course, this was a long time back and a simpler time when people were more likely to do what they were told)
As the WHO approached the endgame and routine vaccination was phased out, sporadic outbreaks were tackled by very tough lockdowns and 'ring vaccination' where everyone within a certain area was vaccinated to nip outbreaks in the bud.
Unfortunately, it looks like Coronavirus can be spread by the 'walking sick', there may be animal hosts and the virus may mutate over time making things a lot more challenging