Replies

In other words, during those first few hours when you start coming down with something, you usually don't know for sure whether it is just a cold, the flu, or something more serious. It is that time period when a contagious kid could infect dozens at school, maybe more dozens on the school bus, the rest of the family, then dozens more in the waiting room. All within the course of perhaps three or four hours.

I believe (and I'll admit it if I'm found to be wrong) it behaves like chicken pox - incubation is several days to 2 weeks and then the pox show up. Once the pox show up is when one is contagious. That's why my pediatrician hustled me out of the waiting room and out the back door of the office when I brought my son in with this strange rash last year . . . .sure 'nuff - It was chicken pox (a year AFTER his chicken pox vaccination).

Keep in mind, Chicken Pox is not a true Pox virus, it's in the Herpes family.

Smallpox and cowpox are trey Poxes, and are in the Variola family of viruses.

The characteristics of Chicken Pox aren't necessarily going to be a good indicator of the characteristics of Smallpox.