Smallpox virus is an equal opportunity borrower.
It has to live.
It has to replicate itself in order to live. It has to borrow human cells in order to replicate. It has to continually find new cells that are usable–cells that aren’t already mutilated. When it has used up the cells in one human host it has to move on to another.
No discrimination here. Smallpox doesn’t care who it borrows cells from. Its host can live in a palace or under a bridge. It’s all the same to the virus.
SMALLPOX STILL EXISTS?
If smallpox has been eradicated, why do I use the present tense?
Because the virus still exists. Officially, only in two hyper-secure laboratories–one at CDC in Atlanta, and one at the Vector Institute outside Novosibirsk, Siberia. For humanity’s sake, may this virus never escape the laboratories, accidentally or otherwise.
More about that in a future post.
IF YOU HAVE A TYPICAL SMALLPOX CASE
So what does a typical case of smallpox look like?
You’re going about your daily life. Doing the laundry, playing with your children, buying the food, chatting with friends.
What you don’t know is that one of the friends you saw in the market this morning is….
… hasn’t noticed that red spots are starting to appear in her mouth. You talked with her for a while, face-to-face. As she talked, and maybe coughed, she breathed on you. The virus hitched a ride.
And you?
You inhaled the virus–variola major. It quickly and stealthily slipped into some of your own cells, moved in–in the middle of the night so to speak.
The Smallpox Virus Has No Choice – It Has to Use Your Cells
Hunkered down in your dark and cozy cells, smallpox works fast to multiply.
It shoots out copies of itself to neighbor cells. Now there are lots more of these hard-working organisms (viruses never take a break) to multiply and shoot out copies of themselves to more neighbor cells. And more.
As soon as the virus finishes using one of your cells, it has to quickly borrow another or it will die. By the time you finish your errands and return home, smallpox, a virus that can evade your immune defenses, is gathering speed.
The marauder is taking over.
But, so far, you feel fine. In fact, you’ll feel fine for the next seven to nineteen days. So you carry on with life as usual–cuddling with your husband, taking care of your mom, laughing with your best friend, playing with your toddler, nursing your baby.
They’re safe from your incubating menace, for now.
The Day That Will Change Your World
Smallpox has established a beachhead before you–the host–have an inkling it’s there. Then it lunges out of hiding, and your life, assuming you live, will never be the same.
You suddenly feel like you’ve come down with the flu—chills, high fever, headache, backache, and perhaps nausea. Three days of misery, followed by a a brief respite, before you develop a rash.
Once the first sores appear, your family is no longer safe. You begin sharing copies of the virus with those closest to you.
You may not notice the very first sores inside your mouth, but a thousand or more others may appear on your body within twenty-four hours. And even more on internal organs.
The Rash of Smallpox
You could be like the woman I encountered on a road south of the Sahara. I write about her in the first chapter of Vaccines & Bayonets: Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid Tribalism, Terror and the Cold War.
“She knew the stealth of smallpox, for after she seemed to recover from the flu-like symptoms, the virus suddenly leapt from hiding. It planted sores in her mouth, and raced across her forehead, then the rest of her face, stealing her beauty. It rushed down her body to the palms of her hands, the soles of her feet. It persisted until it filled the hideous sores with pus, white, then yellow.
She knew the aloneness of the isolation hut, and in that dark space knew hunger when sores in her mouth and throat made it too painful to swallow. She knew agony from the unseen lesions on internal organs, and from bedding brushed against pustules beginning to break down….
And as well as she knew anything, she knew that without the vaccine she surely would have infected her baby boy.”
The Virus on the Move
Smallpox wreaks havoc in every corner of your body.
As it finishes it’s job on you, worse than the most destructive ungrateful guest, it moves out leaving physical and emotional chaos behind–even blindness–and immediately sneaks into new digs.
The owners of these new digs, the hosts, like you, don’t know the squatters have moved in and are borrowing their cells. Smallpox has to find another host. And there’s a good chance your baby is it.
You may also enjoy other pages of this website. www.beebloeser.com
Thanks Bee. You teach a hard lesson but a valuable one to learn about. As we face these days of the ignorant believing that their babies shouldn’t be vaccinated from Measles or other childhood diseases, thus encouraging the spread of these diseases, we need all the reminder we can get.
Thank you,
Mary Lou
I appreciate your comments, Mary Lou. Indeed, even in the case of smallpox there were anti-vaccination proponents. Fortunately for humanity, their voices were not allowed to prevail. Thank you for reading and for sharing this important message.
I would be interested in the debate about destroying the present vials. Why would any nation want to risk this horrible disease getting loose again? Your description of how it invades the body and steals cells was very well-written and the photos of those poor babies makes you sick.
Thanks so much for the encouraging words and for your input, Janice. I think many others will be interested in the debate about whether all smallpox samples should be destroyed.
I taught immunology for 12 years and I get so frustrated when people choose not to immunize their children due to faulty information. These diseases are still in our population just waiting for a chance to re-emerge. Third world nations would love to have access to these vaccines and the first world population takes them for granted!
Thank you dtills. It’s gratifying to hear from someone whose background gives further weight to the conversation. My readers, and all the rest out there, need good information. I appreciate your participating in getting this important information out to the world.
Wow, that was an education! I did not know how smallpox propagated, or what it looked like. I’m so glad it seems to be eradicated. Those poor babies!!!
Thank you, Tess, for such encouraging comments. I’m glad you learned something new about the smallpox virus. So far as eradication, the last naturally occurring case of smallpox was diagnosed in 1977. After that, for more than two years the World Health Organization sent workers and volunteers into every nook and cranny of the globe. They checked and double-checked and re-checked for all of those months before WHO could confidently declare the world smallpox-free. I hope you continue to find new and interesting information in my posts. Thanks again.
Great writing. Ethel Ethel Lee-Miller Tucson Arizona USA Enhanced Life Management- Author, Public Speaker, Writing Seminars http://www.etheleemiller.com h 520.638.7343 c 973.460.4192 Author: Seedlings, Stories of Relationships ( 2014 NM-AZ Book Awards finalist) Author: Thinking of Miller Place: A Memoir of Summer Comfort Toastmasters Int’l – DTM. 1997-2017 Amazon Author Central Connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +
>
Thank you, Ethel. Your encouragement means a lot.
What a scary description of how the virus works. A valuable thing for us all to be aware of.
Do you know what the mortality rate was, before smallpox was eradicated?
Thank you for a very well-written blog.
The mortality rate from smallpox was variable depending on many factors such as population density and the nutritional status of a population. In Southeast Asia, some sources place mortality at 30%-40%. In West Africa it was 20%-30%. But in South America and certain parts of East Africa deaths from smallpox were rare. I’ll write more about that in a future post. Thanks for your kind words and for bringing up an interesting topic, Pam. I’ll write more about it in a future post.
What a heartbreaking progression smallpox is. All of your ideas for topics sound interesting to me, but the one that sparks my curiosity the most because I’m wondering what experts would chime in with is the debate about keeping vials of smallpox around. Learning more about how those vials may be used versus the risk they may have would be fascinating, especially if the risk factor of those vials were presented in context with the risk factor of keeping vials of other diseases. How do the smallpox vials rate on the scary scale?
Yes, Irene, heartbreaking is an appropriate description for smallpox. Thanks for visiting my blog and for letting me know which one on my list of future topics most sparks your curiosity. And your final question–how do the smallpox vials rate on the scare scale–is one that will lead into further research. Thanks again.