“ Does that mean people who were vaccinated against Smallpox are immune to Monkeypox?”
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Correct. It does mean people vaccinated for Small Pox are also vaccinated from Monkey Pox.
The problem today is, in the 70’s they stopped giving the small pox vaccine unless requested for travel to third world countries or just preference.
All they have to do is dust off the Small Pox vaccine. It eradicated Small Pox and does the same for Monkey Pox.
No new fancy vaccine is needed!
It was found that immunologically active memory cells declined quite rapidly after the vaccination, but eventually the number of cells plateaued at about 10% of the original number.
Now there is at least one scientific report showing that these cells remain for more than 50 years and are able to provide an active immune response when challenged (by experimental revaccination). Thus, it appears that people who were vaccinated against smallpox still retain protection against the disease, and therefore at least some (but not complete) protection against monkeypox virus.
Ref: Crotty S. et al. Cutting edge: long-term B cell memory in humans after smallpox vaccination. J Immunol 15;171(10): 4969-4973.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14607890/
Amazing, they declared Smallpox eradicated and stopped giving the vaccine. Now this arises. So utterly unpredictable!
Didn’t they ever stop to think “If we end Smallpox vaccination, we could have a Monkeypox epidemic?”