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To: Roos_Girl
False. There will always be a case here or a case there.

NOT if we get measles eradicated. There hasn't been a case here or there of smallpox in 40 years and unless governments have lied to us about their behavior 40 some years ago there won't be. Polio was to be the next human disease eradicated. Absent resistance from some muslim lunatics it would have been done by now. Amazingly, even with Obama running things, polio eradication is presently gaining. Measles was to be the next major target for human disease eradication. Which is certainly possible. Measle's parent disease, the animal plague Rinderpest, from which it evolved c. 1200 years ago, which affected multiple species of both domestic livestock and wild animals with death rates sometimes over 90% has been eradicated even in wild animal populations. Measles, which only affects humans, is surely an easier target. Once eradicated vaccination for that disease stops and all risks from both the disease and its vaccine, ends.

There are relatively few diseases which are theoretically eradicable with current technology. The next to cross the line may well not be polio, but dracunulosis ('Guinea Worm disease'), the complex life cycle of which allows for interruption without needing any vaccine. The Carter Foundation is close to finishing that off. Then Jimmy C. will finally have a worthwhile legacy! Oddly, attaching such a legacy to otherwise worthless lefties is not unprecedented. The USSR properly deserves the legacy for eradicating smallpox as much as it deserves any legacy for doubting that eradication. True, the Americans did the work involved and provided the needed funds. But until Russians identified and promoted a new strategy aiming for eradication, the Americans had been willing to spend the same funds and effort indefinitely on mere disease containment. Just like the GOPe pledges to contain the left.

36 posted on 07/03/2015 10:12:00 AM PDT by JohnBovenmyer (Obama been Liberal. Hope Change)
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To: JohnBovenmyer

Small pox acts quite differently than measles, though. It’s not as contagious as measles is, it has a shorter time from exposure to symptoms and was more easily recognized as being small pox than measles is now because most doctors don’t see measles cases anymore. I think you’re right, theoretically it would be possible to eradicate measles, but functionally I have my doubts.


37 posted on 07/03/2015 10:48:01 AM PDT by Roos_Girl (The world is full of educated derelicts. - Calvin Coolidge)
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