More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, people are getting used to the idea that the virus isn't going to disappear. Scientists predict that COVID will likely become endemic, a permanent part ...

Throughout the course of human history, one infectious disease (Figure 1) may account for more deaths than any other, perhaps all others combined. Smallpox mortality falls between 20% and 50%. Until ...

Smallpox, the only human infectious disease to have been successfully eradicated, ailed people at least 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. A study of DNA sampled from Viking Age skeletons ...

Dive into how fear of smallpox reshaped societies long before vaccines turned the tide 💉🛡️. This short history peels back ...

A woman in Kathmandu carrying her child infected by small pox in 1964. Photo: WHO The smallpox virus plagued Nepali communities throughout the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. As historian Susan ...

In 1966, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a worldwide campaign to eradicate smallpox. The aim was ‘zeropox’ -- not just control of the disease, but its complete elimination. After an ...

Scientists went to extraordinary lengths to eradicate smallpox from the world. Rahima Banu is now recorded as having the last known... How Rahima came to hold a special place in smallpox history — and ...

Smallpox is caused by the variola virus, which can be spread though infectious droplets that are exhaled as people talk, cough, or sneeze. It seems like smallpox has infected humans for as long as ...