Everybody welcome back to X-5. I'll tell you the questions you always want to ask and talk about it in the way that easy times aren't. Really host? I'm Tim.
So kind of today we're talking about smallpox, but to begin with, we've been hearing a lot about monkeypox in the news. Could you explain monkeypox list? Sure. So monkeypox is a virus that's primarily found in Central Africa, but recently, you know, meanwhile, we are recording this episode in May 2nd, 22.
It has been spreading in a number of other countries, including the United Kingdom, Portugal, Belgium, and the United States. So while monkeypox was first identified in 1958, among lab monkeys in Copenhagen, Denmark. But monkeys are actually not a natural reservoir of the virus, rather than a certain amount of certain roads. One of the symptoms are much like smallpox, but milder, both smallpox and monkeypox, long-to-acadical or coldpox viruses.
So you could say they're got a cousins. All thepox viruses. Okay, got it. Now, what is smallpox?
What I say, what was smallpox? So smallpox was a dangerous disease caused by virus and would have very high mortality rates. So deadly that during the first half of the 20th century, between 300 million and 500 million people died of this disease. And even as recently as in 1967, about 15 million people caught disease and about 2 million people died from it.
But you are right to talk about it in the past that's a little longer exists as an epidemic disease. In fact, the last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Health Organization. They certified a global eradication of the disease in 1980. So how is it that scientists were able to completely eradicate smallpox, but haven't been able to do that with lots of other diseases, including things like COVID-19?
Well, there are a few things that have been working in favor of what's specifically smallpox. Smallpox only had two primary strains to worry about, and the vaccine worked against both. It was caused by a virus, and there are two different species of smallpox viruses that could cause a disease. What was called the virulent major, and the other is a virulent minor.
In fact, another name for smallpox is actually virulent, which comes from the Latin word for a spotted, which is also the virus's eonside nickname. And a second advantage is that smallpox was such a nasty and visually obvious disease that many countries made vaccination programs compulsory, making it easier for so many many countries to agree to the massive eradication effort. And another big factor is whether or not the disease has an animal reservoir in nature, smallpox or virulent effects only humans, not animals. So it has nowhere to go once it's eradicated from the human population.
And finally, our another big key is the vaccine self was effective, cheap, and really easy to produce. Yes, we should explain that first vaccine of smallpox since its initial story, and actually explains why we call them vaccines. Yeah, yeah, the first vaccine ever created was for smallpox. It was invented by a British physician and scientist named Edward Jenner, who used observations from cowpox infections to pioneer the smallpox of vaccines.
In fact, the word vaccine came from vaccine, which is the Latin word for cow, because cowpox was used to vaccinate against smallpox. What was its observation about cowpox? So in 1798, Jenner made a very curious observation. Since he had lived in the countryside in non-city, he found that some of his patients had co-'d gotten cowpox and recovered from it did not get the same disease again, the age seemed to be immune against it.
Then he realized that these same patients also seemed to be immune against smallpox. Now since smallpox was an even more deadly disease back then, killing most of people infected, so Edward Jenner used a fluid that he got from cowpox lesions and scratched it basically into healthy people. That way, he could make those people immune against smallpox, and thus the very first vaccine was born. So I should think about cowpox as similar than not as bad as smallpox.
That's right, cowpox is also the disease that affects the skin, but people have a disease tend to mainly have a couple of red blisters as it does. Okay, so in diving into smallpox, we've also covered monkeypox and cowpox and I've listened to this. I'm also wondering when we're going to get to chickenpox. So how does chickenpox fit into all this?
Well, the monkeypox disease can appear similar to chickenpox in its appearance, but remember that virus family of orderpox viruses which come earlier, that includes things like smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox? All thepox viruses. Yes, that's how we were the day. So here's a fun fact, chickenpox isn't part of that family.
Instead, chickenpox is a part of the virus cell of a virus which is one of the nine viruses belonging to a family of actually herpes vaccines at a few minutes. And so it's different, even if it's a system of skin, sometimes looks similar and be confused. We're going under that decision. If you did send us an email, we are at the LIFI, the podcast at gmail.com.
If you're regular, please do leave us a rating order for you on IG as well. No big two minutes and it helps other listeners to find out about this. As always, thanks for getting me on the podcast. I'll see you on the next video.
Bye bye.