“Small pox eventually exterminated itself when people had access to clean water, good food, clean living conditions, and proper hygiene.”
The above statement is so completely wrong and ignorant that it is laughable. Small Pox did not just exterminate itself because of hygiene. It took a worldwide effort of immunization to end smallpox on this planet. The exposure of cowpox was known to give immunity a full 150 years prior to the last case in the wild. It didn’t just go extinct, it was actively eradicated and it was not simply clean water and washing ones hands that did it.
Fortunately it was spread only by contact with an infected person, or exposed materials, so concentrated, targeted active worldwide program that took over 10 years eradicated the disease, not clean water and soap.
The last outbreak in the US, was in 1949, and Europe as well saw it end mostly in the 1940s, due to vaccination and active containment of any outbreak reported.
Your proposition that clean drinking water and soap ended Smallpox is the most ignorant thing I have read on this site in a long long time.
Where am I wrong from the whole post, not just cherry picking a sentence.
It was already declining before the vaccination
It got worse when the vaccination was used regularly
then it declined again.
“Fortunately it was spread only by contact with an infected person, or exposed materials, so concentrated, targeted active worldwide program that took over 10 years eradicated the disease, not clean water and soap.”
So..soap and water and hygiene after being around an infected person or materials and having a better immunity because of the other - better food, better living conditions had NOTHING to do with the eradication of the disease?