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Eyam (AFP) - In the 17th century, residents in the remote English village of Eyam quarantined themselves to prevent the spread of bubonic plague. Most paid with their lives. Now their descendants and locals are outraged that a steady stream of visitors have ignored government warnings to stay at home to tackle the coronavirus outbreak. In 1665, the bubonic plague arrived in the Derbyshire village of Eyam from London, nearly 150 miles (250 kilometres) further south, carried by fleas in fabrics ordered by a tailor. As dozens died, the rector of Eyam church, William Mompesson, with the help of his...

CNN anchor Don Lemon said Friday on his show “Don Lemon Tonight” that the unvaccinated should not expect to be able to do the things that those who are vaccinated against COVID can “no matter how loudly people yell about it.” Lemon said, “There is the literal toxicity of anti-vax rhetoric in the face of vaccine mandates. California is the first state in the nation to require COVID vaccinations for students. Great California. I said it.” He continued, “This is about public health. We just passed a grim milestone of 700,000 deaths from COVID in this country. 700,000 dead Americans,...

Fauci must not have brushed up on his vaccine history before going on with Acosta. Both the smallpox vaccine and the polio vaccine faced loud opposition. When widespread smallpox vaccination began in the early 1800s in England, many parents opposed the vaccine and some clergy opposed it, calling it “unchristian” because it came from an animal, according to the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. Others opposed the vaccine because they distrusted medicine in general. Even then, some vaccine opponents objected because they believed the vaccine violated their personal liberty. This objection grew louder after Britain ordered mandatory vaccination for infants...

Amid sagging Covid-19 vaccination rates and stubborn levels of vaccine hesitancy, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN on Saturday the United States’ successful campaigns to eradicate smallpox and polio in the last century wouldn’t have succeeded if those vaccines were subject to the same level of misinformation that currently surrounds coronavirus vaccines. In an interview with CNN, Fauci warned that some unvaccinated adults have been exposed to false information, are often skeptical of objective Covid-19 data and frequently justify their decision not to get vaccinated with “things that are really just not true.” After anchor Jim Acosta compared the situation to...

FDA approves drug to treat smallpoxDisease considered eradicated in 1980 but drug development for smallpox is an important component for medical countermeasure response [6/4/2021] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Tembexa (brincidofovir) to treat smallpox. Although the World Health Organization declared smallpox, a contagious and sometimes fatal infectious disease, eradicated in 1980, there have been longstanding concerns that the virus that causes smallpox, the variola virus, could be used as a bioweapon. Before its eradication in 1980, the variola virus mainly spread by direct contact among people. Symptoms typically began 10 to 14 days after infection and included...

The US moratorium on gain-of-function experiments has been rescinded, but scientists are split over the benefits—and risks—of such studies. Talha Burki reports. On Dec 19, 2017, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A moratorium had been in place since October, 2014. At the time, the NIH had stated that the moratorium “will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new US Government gain-of-function research policy”. This process...

BOSTON (AP) — A highly contagious disease originating far from America’s shores triggers deadly outbreaks that spread rapidly, infecting the masses. Shots are available, but a divided public agonizes over getting jabbed. Sound familiar? Newly digitized records — including a minister’s diary scanned and posted online by Boston’s Congregational Library and Archives — are shedding fresh light on devastating outbreaks of smallpox that hit the city in the 1700s.

In 1760, Charleston, in what is now South Carolina, faced what was to become known as the Great Small Pox Epidemic. In a city of 8,000 people, most of whom had no immunity, smallpox spread during the early months of 1760. The Charlestonians' response was superior to the modern world's response to COVID. Most importantly, Charlestonians did not overreact, although smallpox posed a more serious threat than COVID. While COVID, on average, kills 2% of those who are infected, with the elderly and people with comorbidities at the greatest risk, smallpox killed 33% of those infected, regardless of age or...

Did Fauci’s Wuhan lab research “gain of function” for the smallpox virus?

In my rare moments of not wearing my rose-tinted glasses, I think it's time we stop calling him "Dementia Joe." Biden may get angry, stutter and struggle to find his words, but you have to be on the ball to drop code words, twice, during a live Presidential Debate. That's exactly what Joe did on Thursday evening when he gloomily stated, "We're about to go into a dark winter." Then he repeated it again: "A Dark Winter." What are the odds that he'd "accidentally" use the exact code name for a 2001 simulation of a "smallpox attack on U. S....

Scientists have discovered extinct strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons - proving for the first time that the killer disease plagued humanity for at least 1400 years. Smallpox spread from person to person via infectious droplets, killed around a third of sufferers and left another third permanently scarred or blind. Around 300 million people died from it in the 20th century alone before it was officially eradicated in 1980 through a global vaccination effort - the first human disease to be wiped out... He said: "We discovered new strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons...

We didn’t lock down almost the entire country in 1968/69, 1957, or 1949-1952, or even during 1918. But in a terrifying few days in March 2020, it happened to all of us, causing an avalanche of social, cultural, and economic destruction that will ring through the ages. There was nothing normal about it all. We’ll be trying to figure out what happened to us for decades hence. How did a temporary plan to preserve hospital capacity turn into two-to-three months of near-universal house arrest that ended up causing worker furloughs at 256 hospitals, a stoppage of international travel, a 40%...

With a vaccine at least a year away, the past may hold the answer to getting the world back in order. Variolation is a six-hundred-year-old predecessor to the smallpox vaccination. It was also an essential part of creating the United States of America. It may be time to visit it once again.Variolation worked by introducing a minute dose of the smallpox virus into the human body to trigger a mild infection that stimulates the immune system. Unfortunately, some people reacted strongly even to a small dose, and about 2% of people died. The variolation mortality rate, though, was still better...

COVID-19 has us all thinking about public health, but looking back, there have been many pandemics before, and we persist in spite of them. As of April 15, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 605,390 cases of COVID-19 in the United States. These have occurred across all 50 states and have resulted in 24,582 deaths. We are all feeling the effects of the pandemic. Schools are closed, businesses have shut their doors, and nobody knows what’s coming next. While COVID-19 is one of the largest pandemics of the 21st century, you might be wondering how it stacks up...

From a disease standpoint, Shakespeare was living in arguably the worst place and time in history. Shakespeare's overcrowded, rat-infested, sexually promiscuous London, with raw sewage flowing in the Thames, was the hub for the nastiest diseases known to mankind. Here are the worst of the worst. 1. Plague It is little surprise that the plague was the most dreaded disease of Shakespeare's time. Carried by fleas living on the fur of rats, the plague swept through London in 1563, 1578-9, 1582, 1592-3, and 1603 (Singman, 52). The outbreaks in 1563 and 1603 were the most ferocious, each wiping out over...

The Trump administration simulated the ability of the United States to handle a flulike pandemic months before the coronavirus turned the scenario into a reality. The Health and Human Services Department led the exercise, known as the "Crimson Contagion," last year in conjunction with dozens of states and federal agencies, according to the New York Times. HHS also invited charitable groups, insurance companies, and major hospitals to take part in the effort. Former Air Force physician Robert Kadlec, who has studied biodefense issues for decades, led the exercise, which imagined a contagious disease that originated in China and spread globally...

George Washington's military genius is undisputed. Yet American independence must be partially attributed to a strategy for which history has given the infamous general little credit: his controversial medical actions. Traditionally, the Battle of Saratoga is credited with tipping the revolutionary scales. Yet the health of the Continental regulars involved in battle was a product of the ambitious initiative Washington began earlier that year at Morristown, close on the heels of the victorious Battle of Princeton. Among the Continental regulars in the American Revolution, 90 percent of deaths were caused by disease, and Variola the small pox virus was the...

A series of e-mail exchanges between officials at the Department of Health and Human Services shows growing alarm at the amount of projected profit from a government contract for a drug company whose controlling shareholder is a longtime Democratic Party activist. Ronald Perelman is controlling shareholder of Siga Technologies and a longtime Democratic Party activist and fundraiser. He's also a large contributor to Republicans, but has been a particular friend of the Obama White House. Also on Siga's board of directors is Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, who has had close relations with the Obama...

U.S. regulators Friday approved the first treatment for smallpox — a deadly disease that was wiped out four decades ago — in case the virus is used in a terror attack. Smallpox, which is highly contagious, was eradicated worldwide by 1980 after a huge vaccination campaign. But people born since then haven’t been vaccinated, and small samples of the smallpox virus were saved for research purposes, leaving the possibility it could be used as a biological weapon. Maker SIGA Technologies of New York has already delivered 2 million treatments that will be stockpiled by the government, which partially paid for...

A Plague Upon Us; the Niagara Falls Smallpox Epidemic of 1914 September 1, 2015 By Michelle Ann Kratts It must have seemed like the end of the world--the Apocalypse--when smallpox came to Niagara Falls, New York, in January of 1914. Luckily, the city pulled through...although it was quite a harrowing journey to the end. It wasn't exactly a topic I wanted to dive into after a refreshing vacation at Saranac Lake, but there it was on my desk: a dusty, decrepit scrapbook filled with tattered news clippings on one subject, smallpox. I try and imagine the person who cut these...