The CIA now assesses that four nations – Iraq, North Korea, Russia and, to the surprise of some specialists, France – have undeclared samples of the smallpox virus.

Barton Gellman

When I was in elementary school my friend Shannon’s dad died because he caught Varicella Zoster from one of his children. There were 4 or maybe 5 children in the family and all of them were under the age of 16 when he passed. Her family fell into poverty surprisingly fast. For the rest of the time they lived on our street, they were poor and on government assistance. That was the year I caught it too. I still carry the scars of my bout with Chicken Pox. I was lucky because I was more likely to survive it as a child than as an adult and was assured by all that I couldn’t get it again.

I took that Varicella immunity for granted and believed that a few scars were all that remained from my childhood experience. That was not quite the truth though. Around the age of 40, there began a deep, steady pain in and around the Rhomboid muscles (in the central back near the shoulder blades) that radiated towards the right collarbone area. It lasted for a few days before a bright red, itchy and painful rash erupted just below my collar bone on the right side. My introduction to the remains of my childhood infection with Varicella Zoster in its Shingles form was a surprise. After all, didn’t most Shingles cases happen within the elderly population? I would have gladly taken the vaccine rather than the virus, but it didn’t come out until the 1980s.

My great grandmother was barely 4 feet tall. She stopped growing after surviving Variola Minor during the 1800s in Easton, Pennsylvania. Everyone in the family referred to her as ‘Little Grandma’. I was told the name of what had caused her short stature but I would get it confused and call Smallpox ‘Little Chicks’. But even though she was short, she was one of the lucky ones. Children were lost in nearly every family due to diseases and viruses. Smallpox wasn’t officially declared eradicated until 1980 and was the first disease to have been fought on a global scale. I have heard that it now only exists in vials.

Vaccines have been one of the greatest human interventions in the health and well-being of people around the world and have been an invaluable success. They existed long before I was born in one way or another, but the sheer number of breakthroughs during my lifetime has been astounding. Vaccines and how they are given are not without concerns and complications. But overall they have changed the world for the better. As a veteran of the USAF, I have received more vaccinations than I can remember. Most of them occurred on one day. We walked a gauntlet between lines of air gun injector wielding medical technicians. We’d take a few steps, hold very very still, get a shot in each arm and repeat until we cleared the line.

Follow this link to see year by year the inventions in vaccines that have happened just within your lifetime. I would print it here but it’s too many. https://www.immunize.org/vaccines/vaccine-timeline/

Although there’s been a lot of controversy on this topic. I am very grateful if no one else ever has to suffer through Smallpox or Polio. I’m hoping for more to come, especially for things like Ebola. Less suffering is always better.