Study suggests smallpox originated 2,000 years earlier than thought

UPI ^ | January 11. 2023 | Cara Murez, HealthDay News

[SunkenCiv]

Researchers now believe the disease dates back 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

While the origins of smallpox has remained a mystery for centuries, researchers now believe that it dates back 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Until recently, the earliest genetic evidence of smallpox, the variola virus, was from the 1600s. And in 2020, researchers found evidence of it in the dental remains of Viking skeletons, pushing its existence 1,000 years earlier.

Now, Italian scientists have used a mathematical equation to pinpoint the beginnings of smallpox, and coupled with pox scarring seen on ancient Egyptian mummies, they have pushed the emergence of the virus back 3,800 years...

In the new study, the researchers found that different strains of smallpox all descended from a single common ancestor. A small fraction of the genetic components found in Viking-age genomes even persisted until the 18th century.

To estimate the origin of the virus, the researchers then accounted for something called the "time-dependent rate phenomenon."

...By using a mathematical equation to account for the time-dependent rate phenomenon, the research team estimated the first emergence of smallpox may harken back to Egyptian times: Ancient mummies, including the Pharaoh Ramses V, who died in 1157 BC, had suspicious scarring.

[SunkenCiv]

• Classical Corner: The Antonine Plague and the Spread of Christianity [04/14/2020]
  (possibly smallpox, rather than Bubonic plague)

[blueplum]

looks like the Spanish are off the hook for decimating the new world population with smallpox - it’s the Vikings’ fault

[rfreedom4u]

Does it really matter WHEN it originated?

How much money was spent on this study and who paid for it?

[null and void]

Bloody Vikings...

[Roadrunner383]

So, how many have your vaccine scar on your shoulder? Can barely make mine out, wouldn’t notice it if I didn’t know where to look.

[Beowulf9]

So it’s been around a long long time. Much longer than any of the other so-called ‘poxes’.

I think it’s time we recognize how ancient and how important this disease IS and call it what it should be called.

BIGpox.

[SunkenCiv]

Yes, it matters. Maybe not to you, but no one cares about that.

[SunkenCiv]

;^)

[SunkenCiv]

Over the decades mine has vanished, but that was a looong while back. I also remember taking the polio vaccine on a sugar cube. And no one had to fill out paperwork, we just showed up and boom, took it and left.

[CFW]

I’m very wary now any time I see that someone is once again doing studies on smallpox and its history and origins. If a “gain of function” smallpox virus is released, we are all going to be so, so screwed!

[SunkenCiv]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4379562/

[snip] Smallpox was a severe human disease caused by the variola virus (VARV), which was both highly lethal and highly contagious [1,2,3,4,5,6]. VARV is a member of the genus Orthopoxvirus [4,5,6]. A characteristic feature of this virus is its strict specificity for humans. This viral pathogen circulated in the human population for many centuries and caused repeated large-scale epidemics with great numbers of both recovered and dead victims [3,7]. In the 18th century, smallpox was the cause of death of more than four hundred thousand people in Europe each year [3]. Fortunately, this particular virus was completely eliminated from the human community by the end of the last century due to vaccination [3,4,8].

The closest relatives of VARV, which are also pathogenic to humans, are the Old World orthopoxviruses, including the vaccinia (VACV), cowpox (CPXV), and monkeypox (MPXV) [5,6]. The major natural reservoir of the last two viruses is rodents. For a long time, the introduction of laboratory strains made it impossible to detect wild VACV in nature [3,4,9,10,11]. It is currently believed that VACV originated from the horsepox virus (HPXV) [12]. However, all these viruses that are closely related to VARV have broad ranges of sensitive hosts; correspondingly, it is of paramount importance to clarify the factors that enhanced the evolutionary specialization of the VARV ancestor towards its single host, humans. [/snip]

[SunkenCiv]

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/hantavirus-infection/facts

[SunkenCiv]

Viruses bleepin’ suck! :^)

[snip] cowpox, also called vaccinia, uncommon mildly eruptive disease of animals, first observed in cows and occurring particularly in cats, that when transmitted to otherwise healthy humans produces immunity to smallpox. [/snip]

https://www.britannica.com/science/cowpox

[CFW]

“So, how many have your vaccine scar on your shoulder? Can barely make mine out, wouldn’t notice it if I didn’t know where to look.”

_____

I can still see mine, although it has faded over the years. The lady who gave it to me is the same lady who brought the new toothbrushes to school to give us along with the little red pills for us to chew that indicated whether or not we had tooth decay and cavities. I guess she was the local “public health official” Weird times, indeed!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“...different strains of smallpox all descended from a single common ancestor.”

A Chinese bat. Or maybe a Chinese pangolin.

[Hootowl99]

My vax scar faded long time ago.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

No scar.

Although I had the shot three times.

After the third time with no reaction they shook their heads and told my mom not to worry about it I obviously had natural immunity.

Gee doc you could not have figured that out by the second shot?

[TigersEye]

You can’t get that at a Mom and Pox shop you have to go to a Big Pox store.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Horsepox?

Somewhere I read it was thought to come from Camelpox. But that was any number of years ago.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I had it, but, like you, it's faded away. Hard to believe...

1971 was the year in which the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, the Redbook Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Territorial Health Officers agreed that the time had come to discontinue routine primary smallpox vaccination for American children.

I was 20 years old when the recommendation to end routine vaccination came out. I was just looking for data on the number of smallpox vaccinations per year after 1971 and I stumbled on this amazing bit of info.

Mass Smallpox Vaccination and Cardiac Deaths, New York City, 1947
(Yes, 1947!)
Emerging Infectious Diseases (CDC), Volume 10, Number 5—May 2004
Authors: Lorna E. Thorpe*†Comments to Author , Farzad Mostashari*, Adam M. Karpati*1, Steven P. Schwartz*, Susan E. Manning*†, Melissa A. Marx*†, and Thomas R. Frieden*
Author affiliations: *New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, New York, USA; †Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Figure 1. Adult vaccination doses administered and estimated person-time at risk for fatal cardiac adverse effects, New York City, 1947.

Abstract
In April 1947, during a smallpox outbreak in New York City (NYC), >6,000,000 people were vaccinated. To determine whether vaccination increased cardiac death, we reviewed NYC death certificates for comparable periods in 1946 and 1948 (N = 81,529) and calculated adjusted relative death rates for the postvaccination period. No increases in cardiac deaths were observed.