[Demidog]

Remember, smallpox has been eradicated.

Do you really believe this? Less than 10% of the world's population has been vaccinated for smallpox. How could the vaccine possibly be responsible?

[coloradan]

Do you really believe this? Less than 10% of the world's population has been vaccinated for smallpox. How could the vaccine possibly be responsible?

If the vacccine is used in the 10% of the world where it's a problem, such that there are then zero cases in the entire world, and most if not all of the spores in the wild decay for lack of hosts, then it's "eradicated" for all practical purposes.

Except, of course, for the stockpiles that we and the USSR kept, ("just in case"), and who knows where the former Soviet ones are now.

[Kozak]

Do you really believe this? Less than 10% of the world's population has been vaccinated for smallpox. How could the vaccine possibly be responsible?

Because they know some medicine. Smallpox has no host except humans and no carrier state. infection spreads person to person only. Since they concentrated immunization in areas where there were active cases, they put a "fire break" around them of immunized people depriving it of fresh victims. Eventually it got squeezed into a smaller and smaller area until the last documented human case was reported in Somalia in 1977.

If there is an outbreak in Pakistan its the result of some lab accident or terrorist event.