This vaccine isn't like others. It leaves an open wound on your arm, it needs to be dressed daily, is pusses. I personally cleaned and dressed a friend of mines injection site a couple of times before he left for Korea, and I cannot see how anbody could be beguiled into thinking that there was no risk in close contact with a child.
I know, although more accurately the 'others' aren't like THE vaccine as this was the original vaccine. I had it as a child and as a second generation Dermatologist I've been interested in smallpox for over 30 years. There were a lot of concerns when vaccination resumed and this complication was probably the biggest one. Happily the recommended care, including covering the site as directed, has worked pretty well so we've seen less of this (just these two) than expected even though the fraction of the population at risk (those with eczema mostly, most children are NOT at risk) has grown. The association of vaccination with heart problems came as a surprise; it was never reported back when everyone was getting vaccinated. The soldier must feel terrible to have his wife and child in isolation. It could be just bad luck, but I'm sure the infectious disease folks will go over his case with a fine tooth comb trying to see where things went wrong. I also suspect the lessons of his case will be rapidly spread to those giving and receiving future vaccinations.
Also be sure to put the final blame where it belongs, on the USSR and Saddam. We know the former weaponized smallpox after its official eradication and they didn't keep adequate controls to rule out spreading it. We know Saddam experimented with germ warfare and we don't for sure know that didn't include smallpox, either or pre-eradication Iraqi origin or later via USSR, which the terrorists could have gotten. Without these evils we wouldn't have resumed vaccination. The shame is that Russians deserved a better legacy on this. It was they who dreamed up the smallpox eradication program in the 60s. We were ineffectively throwing money at smallpox and would have kept doing so while a couple million died annually indefinitely had not the Russians invented a better strategy for our money. A decade later smallpox would have been gone, absent the paranoia in the Kremlin. The smallpox success spawned the polio eradication plan and it too would be gone now, absent the paranoia in a few mosques.
Carolyn
As a kid I remember kids with a clear plastic cuplike device taped over their smallpox vaccination site. The site looked like a nasty boil.
You could look at an older person's arm, outer thigh for girls, for the telltale scar denoting they had had the smallpox vaccination.