Quote:
Originally Posted by jonbxx
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 |
We were warned with swine flu and bird flu; luckily they weren't as transmissible to humans but easily could have been. It was only a matter of time before something more transmissible came along.
It's natural for people to become complacent if these things come and go and they remain unaffected, but the Govt's pandemic planning is a shambles given they had the warnings from other flu outbreaks. Indeed its own flu pandemic exercise a few years ago showed the deficiencies we now have. They did diddly squat apart from hide the report findings in case we got too scared by it.