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Isn’t smallpox one of those diseases that’s kept only in labs?

Of course, they won’t have enough vaccines for us serfs.

Of course, they won’t have enough vaccines for us serfs.

It's not a vaccine, it's a "treatment". Which means it's given after you've contracted the virus not as a preventative measure.

It's supposed to be in just one lab each here and in Russia. But we know the Soviets weaponized it back in the day. It's alleged they weaponized A LOT of it back in the day. Russia denies that, but no one places much faith in their denials. They weren't always as safety conscious as they claimed back in the USSR and its conceivable some got away to one or more of their political friends. Meanwhile a few stray specimens from years back have shown up in this country and tested as infective in the lab.

Small localized, accidental outbreaks can probably be managed; there were several in mostly clear areas towards the end of eradication. But an intentional, widely seeded outbreak would be the worst imaginable biowarfare scenario. Since we can't trust dead Soviets made that impossible our best option is to have as good a defense as possible so perps won't think they can take us out or down far enough to justify the holy hell we'd unleash on anyone responsible.

To that end we took the old vaccine stock, showed it still worked and could work even if significantly diluted. Then we developed a new vaccine and manufactured a bunch of it. I just read we now have over 300 million vaccine units stored now. And now, enough of this, good on paper and in test animals, new drug to treat 2 million cases. Not enough to treat the whole world, but that should be enough to keep fortress America around.

Oh, and by the way for us folks old enough to have be vaccinated back in the day, as well as those vaccinated when it was restarted for the military. Surviving actually smallpox provided pretty good lifelong immunity. The immunity from vaccination wasn't as strong or long lasting although its was clearly worth it when getting the real disease was a realistic threat. When leaks from the old USSR revived the old fears researchers went through the old data. They concluded that while being vaccinated in the distant past didn't do a lot to keep you from contracting smallpox, but it did significantly reduce your risk of dying from it. A normal human immune system can defeat smallpox, but it's a race. Even a small head start helps.