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| smallpox death minister |
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| Written by i j |
| Thursday, 04 August 2011 12:14 |
As some of you already know I have been writing a book, more exactly a role playing game that unfolds in a post-apocalyptic gothic world, I’ll keep you updated about my progress there, but I’m writing this because while I was documenting about something for the book, I thought I should write about it in the website… That’s not what you are going to read today, and it’s not because when thinking about writing about it, I thought that it was going to be cool to write a mini-section that I inaugurate today… In it we are going to talk about some of the most “interesting creations” of our mother nature for killing us…
Smallpox (from now on referred as smallpox or “she”, “beast”, “creature”…) is an old friend of our civilization, it’s believed that it has been whipping us for about 10.000 years killing both adults and children (although she have preference in children) both rich or poor (no distinction here).
It’s believed too that its origin of this creature might be founded in north of Africa because she was hitting Egypt inhabitants for millenniums, it was thanks to commerce that Smallpox was able to expand to other territories mainly to Europe and India and from there to the rest of the world except the Americas which wasn’t discovered yet and from whom we will talk later.
Just for making us an idea of how much this nasty girl enjoyed to party let’s say that it’s considered to be the greatest children murder of all the history, Hitler looks like a teddy bear and Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs killing numbers combined sound like a joke at her size, as an example just consider that during the XVIII century Smallpox took away about 400.000 people… each year… and of those that survived about a third of them ended completely blinded due to the ulcers in their eyes which reduced their survival chances quite a lot during those times.
It’s direct mortality (not counting those that could die because of being blind laters) varied from 20% in the most benevolent strain to 60% in the most hardcore ones… in adults… it usually got to 80% mortality in children up to 98% in some instances.
Such was her influence and horror it provoked that it even got to affect the civil life, in India no one received a name before having been ill of Smallpox and survived it, knowing if someone already danced with her or not was easy due to the horrible marks it leaved in the skin of their victims.
But what exactly is Smallpox?
Nowadays we know quite a lot about it, in deed much more than what was known then, it was believed that this beast was a scourge of some vengeful God ad that the best healing possible was to pry and in some cases to be bleed (technique that consist in applying leeches to the victim so they took their bad blood away, basically almost the worst you could do while being ill), luckily for most of the people the population was so poor for getting to adequate medical services…
Anyway, the fact is that Smallpox is a virus (DNA Orthopoxvirus if that makes sense for anyone) of the size of a third of a micrometer, it can infect their victims using the air, by contact to fluids or by contact to items used or worn by infected people (like clothes, beds or blankets (blankets will gain relevance later).
In general she would get inside you by your lungs and from there she would extend to the rest of your body feeling some special attraction for your precious skin, for doing it she will stealthy go across your cells, in the cells, the virus will replicate itself in the cytoplasm which is in deed quite strange because virus usually replicate in the nucleus.
During this process the infected are not contagious and they don’t show any special symptom.
Then it comes when the cells starts to blow up liberating in the process thousand of millions of little beast that will do as their fathers, it’s now when the victim show the first symptoms which unluckily for him or his neighbors are quite general: High fever, tiredness, headache… basically what you could mistake as a hard hitting but common flu.
During this period the victim could extend the pandemic but he is still not as contagious as he will be later.
Three or four days later the victim will start to develop the most horrible symptoms of the beast, some eruptions will start appearing in the mouth and then they will extend specially to the face and head extending later to the rest of the body, all this process will take about 24 hours and will remain for several weeks, there is a chance of those eruptions not showing, but it’s better they do, because about 100% of the infected by small pox that doesn’t show this eruptions die.
It’s now when the victim is terribly infectious and its here when we can identify several types of infections, basically depending on how nasty our strain is.
Ordinary: That’s what you have better chances of happening if you get infected, about 2 days after the eruptions they will elevate and turn themselves into pustules that will leave marks in your skin for all your life. In some cases they growth too much and start mixing with their neighbor sisters. 10 days after that the pustules start to explode freeing a substance that looks like pus but it’s not and that it’s better not to touch, needless to say that having those exploding inside your mouth must be a great experience… 2 weeks after that some crusts will appear and the pustules will start to fell, when the last one fells you can consider the victim fully healed and not contagious. In this instance mortality goes from 30 to 60% depending on of the pustules got to join their neighbors or not.
Modified: It rarely happens, normally in people that had some short of immunity against the beast, usually on people that already passed Smallpox but somehow didn’t got 100% immune, it’s a way softer version of the previous and only if it gets complicated with other illness it could get fatal.
Malignant: Yes, there is a malignant version, and it happens about 5% of the cases most of them in children, symptoms are quite similar to the ordinary but the pustules don’t growth nor explode and they have much less liquid inside them, this variant is almost always fatal.
Hemorrhagic or black Smallpox: it happens about 2% of the cases being this time more common in adults, the victim develops dark severe subcutaneous hemorrhagic. The skin looks like burned but there is no pustules at all, mortality is about 100% of the cases.
Some time ago we said that during the old days the best healing possible was to pray and sincerely there isn’t much more that we can do when you get infected nowadays, you can prevent it by vaccination but once you get infected… well, it’s true that we haven’t made big investigations about this during the last decades so we might be able to do something using antiviral but it’s not tested.
You have to keep in mind that once someone starts to dance with her until he is healthy again (supposing he survives) it takes 2 weeks of incubation and about 20 days of high fever that won’t allow the victim to survive without other people help.
The good new is that once you survived the best she won’t get back to you for the rest of your life.
Are you sure is in deed that bad?
Well yes is in deed quite bad, you have to understand that in Europe when the next Smallpox pandemic arrived some population already was immune to it and there fore could help the new infected, keep gathering the needed food etc, but What would happen if such pandemic arrives to a virgin land where no one have immunity against the creature?
That’s what happened when Spanish conquerors got to America (I said we would leave this for later) it looks like, we, Europeans bought with us something more than religion and technology, we came with some nasty presents like typhus, measles, pest… and between all them the one that gets the award to the queen of metal is… Smallpox.
It’s estimated that in 1492 the population in the Americas was about 25.3Million people, 130 yeas after Colon arrival there only remained about 700.000 people alive, what does that exactly mean? Just take a look to the following 100 people photo:
Now choose 2 between them, no more than 3, those will be the survivors.
In defense of colon and their colleagues we have to say that that no one really knew what was going to happen, in 1492 no one knew about virus, it wasn’t known that the illness could spread to other lands, and even if they knew they were expecting to get to India and the illness was already there, no one knew either that America people was so vulnerable to this creature… although… sincerely… I would bet that it wouldn’t had mattered if they knew.
And I would bet against it because Smallpox has the doubtful honor of being the first biological weapon ever used in a conscious and planned act, it happened in 1893 when with some knowledge about how this thing worked Coronel Bouquet of the England army in Pennsylvania decided it was a cool idea to “gift” some blankets took from a hospital where people where being healed (or quarantined) of this illness to the tribe of Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo, more than 100.000 people died as consequence of this attack, including civilians of course and children.
Can I get infected by Smallpox?
If you have been with high fevers and headaches for some days and you started looking inside your mouth for finding pustules I have to inform you about 2 things: Firstly you are an Hypochondriac and secondly, you wasted your time.
As I said before those people who already survived an infection of the beast don’t get infected ever again and we are not the only once noticing that, the first one noticing it was a Greek sometime near the 450 B.C. that wasn’t a great help for them, those who get some interesting conclusions and something useful where the Indians who about 1000 A.C created the first rudimentary vaccination in history.
By them this process was called “variolation” and it consisted in introducing in the victim body a weakened version of the virus (or by them “whatever it is that cause the Illness”) wich created a much weaker version of the Illness than if you got it by chance, they noticed that you got infected if you touched the pustules and thought that they could find a way to weaken “whatever it is” by exposing it to direct sunlight (and wondering this have a lot of merit without knowing the existence of bacteria and virus).
I would bet that they choose the sun for being a divinity more than for sending Ultraviolet light but the fact is that it more or less works, yeah the method has it’s flaws like no having any real clue on the virulence of the variolation but it works, for doing it they kept a pustule drying for one year and then its used to infect a victim by a cut on their skin, this variolation wasn’t 100% effective and it wasn’t completely safe because it still has quite a decent chance of causing the actual Illness and therefore killing the victim but was way better than being infected by regular means.
By the end of XVIII century some European medics that came across India noticed the technique and took it first to Turkey and other Arabic countries… Why Arabic? Here is the question My friend… With church we clashed.
This variolation had to be done at least with discretion and for getting it you should move to the black market of medicine, as an example in 1721 she decided to start dancing with Boston people and create a big party there, doctor Zabdiel Boyston variolated (if that word exists) his son and 2 of his slaves (probably not in that order) and none of them got infected.
Later using the help of a cleric worried by the spread of the infection he used the technique with other 242 people of whom only 2% died, at his size 6000 people got infected by normal means… with the expected results. Church wasn’t pleased with that “what was that of opposing to God will?” when they got caught they got arrested, Zabdiel was released under the oath of not doing that again unless being commanded to do so, his cleric friend wasn’t that lucky.
But let’s face it, such succeed in a illness that both killed rich and poor couldn’t get unnoticed by novelty and the variolation started to spread among the population, it was then when Edwar Jenner combined the variolation technique with something that no one before him had noticed: the beast didn’t liked to dance with Girls that had cattle at their care, they do get infected why the cattle version of the Illness with much lesser effects than the hardcore version and he got the idea maybe the cattle version do immunize against the human version too… Why not to inoculate the cute version instead of the hardcore one for the variolation?
Thought and done, and it worked, he called it “Vaccina” (and you just learned where the word “vaccine” comes from).
But hey don’t believe that being a breeder was the coolest thing on the world, ok, you were safer against smallpox but you had to de la with other illness like Anthrax (much better… uh?).
That was an almost lethal hit for our minister of death, in deed it was going to be lethal for him in 1950, when the WHO (World Health Organization) approved a campaign proposed by the Russian to promote a worldwide vaccination against the Smallpox and they took care of checking every small little island to make sure to vaccine every human on earth… and in what is one of the very few success of WHO… they made it.
Nowadays there are only 2 samples of the creature (at least legal and known) the first one is owned by, as it could be otherwise, The EEUU under strict security measures, the other one is held, as it could be otherwise, by Russia under strict security rules too, no visit allowed, I’m sorry.
What would happen if those samples infected someone?
In one hand we would have a pandemic that could make a great mess because nor me, you or that guy of the cool car has passed Smallpox nor we are vaccined against it in his soft or hardcore version so we could loose 60% of mankind “without even getting into troubles”, but in the other hand the most probable outcome is that nothing happened because nowadays 2 incubation weeks is a lot of time for reacting and create the needed vacinnes against smallpox.
That makes Smallpox not the best candidate for the perfect biological weapon, for that there are other options like anthrax, previously mentioned and of wich we will talk in the future.
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 04 August 2011 12:20 |