looks like the Spanish are off the hook for decimating the new world population with smallpox - it’s the Vikings’ fault
Does it really matter WHEN it originated?
How much money was spent on this study and who paid for it?
So, how many have your vaccine scar on your shoulder? Can barely make mine out, wouldn’t notice it if I didn’t know where to look.
So it’s been around a long long time. Much longer than any of the other so-called ‘poxes’.
I think it’s time we recognize how ancient and how important this disease IS and call it what it should be called.
BIGpox.
I’m very wary now any time I see that someone is once again doing studies on smallpox and its history and origins. If a “gain of function” smallpox virus is released, we are all going to be so, so screwed!
“...different strains of smallpox all descended from a single common ancestor.”
A Chinese bat. Or maybe a Chinese pangolin.
Written documentation from medical scholar Antonis Faucius declared that the smallpox virus would be treated by a process he called “variolation”, whereby the pustules would be scratched into the arms of the people who never had it.
“It’s the only approved way! Absolutely safe! After all, I am science!”
Galen, aDNA and the Plague
Rebecca Flemming
https://classicalstudies.org/galen-adna-and-plague
Plague of Cyprian
The Plague of Cyprian was a pandemic that afflicted the Roman Empire from about AD 249 to 262.[1][2] The plague is thought to have caused widespread manpower shortages for food production and the Roman army, severely weakening the empire during the Crisis of the Third Century.[2][3][4] Its modern name commemorates St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, an early Christian writer who witnessed and described the plague.[2] The agent of the plague is highly speculative because of sparse sourcing, but suspects have included smallpox, measles, and viral haemorrhagic fever (filoviruses) like the Ebola virus.[1][2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Cyprian