The Eradication of Smallpox

1980 CE — Global, Global

Today: Worldwide (declared at Geneva)

Smallpox killed perhaps 300 million people in the twentieth century alone and had been killing for at least three thousand years. A global campaign — run through the Cold War with Soviet and American cooperation, using ring vaccination to surround each outbreak rather than trying to vaccinate everyone — chased it down to its last cases in Somalia in 1977. In 1980 the World Health Organization declared it gone. It is the only human disease ever deliberately driven to extinction, and the virus now exists in two freezers.

Worth knowing: The last natural case was a hospital cook in Somalia in 1977, who survived. The last death came a year later in Birmingham, England, from a laboratory leak — the disease's final victim was killed by a sample of the thing that was already being eradicated.

Pattern: Pandemic — A pathogen spreads through a population and reshapes its demography, economy, and beliefs at once.

Entry 229 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.