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Smallpox: A Contagious Disease

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Introduction In the past, people believed that deities existed and they controlled the world. Also, people were not defeated by powerful diseases, but instead they believed that diseases came from God’s punishment. Diseases killed a great number of people. People felt weak, apprehensive, and terrified. The main reason why people were terrified of diseases is because they could not find any methods to treat or prevent diseases. In history, many deadly diseases damaged cultures and countries, so people should have know smallpox that had an effect and cause many people between the present and past.
Background
Smallpox is a serious, contagious, and sometimes fatal infectious disease caused by a virus. Most people know that smallpox was a serious …show more content…

Smallpox caused an immense suffering through the ages in many areas. About 300 million to 500 million deaths were from smallpox worldwide during the 20th century, and people who got smallpox could be blinds (MedicineNet, 2015). It shows smallpox was popular in 20th century, and people didn’t control spread of smallpox. Indeed, they didn’t know what to do to prevent it, and they only accepted or suffered a result of death. According to research by Stefan Riedel (2005), smallpox was one of the reasons that caused the Roman Empire to die out. People knew Roman armies are very powerful, but they couldn’t defeat smallpox. It destroyed the powerful Roman Empire. On the other hand, smallpox existed a long time ago to kill people. Smallpox has been a scourge against humanity for at least the past 1500 years, and perhaps much longer than that (Edward & Allison, 2003). This means we can’t count how many people died because of smallpox in the past 1500 years. According to the article “A Look at Each Vaccine: Smallpox Vaccine” by Paul A. Offit (2014), smallpox has probably killed more people in the history of the world than all other infectious diseases combined. Therefore, smallpox brought huge harm in long …show more content…

The first risk is that not all people can get the smallpox vaccine. Some specific people should not get the vaccine such as pregnant women, children younger than 12 months of age, and people with weakened immune systems (CDC, 2007). This limit causes the specific people to get smallpox easily because they all have a weaker immune system. Another risk is that the vaccine has many side effects, but the severe side effects following administration of the smallpox vaccine are relatively uncommon. Based on past history of smallpox vaccinations, between 14 and 52 people per 1 million vaccinated could appear side effects, and 1 to 2 of these people may die from these reactions(Cleveland Clinic, n.d.). This shows the vaccine has an obvious risk even though it is

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