Stop comparing Covid with Smallpox

[Lilifer]

Smallpox had a fatality rate of 30% of the population FFS! The estimated worldwide covid Infection fatality rate is put at 0.15% in
this article pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33768536/ published by John Iaonnidis from Stanford university.

Therefore trying to use Smallpox vaccination mandate as an argument for Covid vaccination mandate just makes you look ignorant of historical fact. Find a better argument for mandating covid vaccine rather than comparing it to a disease that was wiping out nearly a third of the population 😐

Has one person claimed a similarity and this thread is in answer to them?

@Heartdogs

Has one person claimed a similarity and this thread is in answer to them?

I've never heard smallpox mentioned as much as I have this last 12 months!

People tend to say things like, would you let smallpox run rampant without mandating vaccination.

But it's really not that similar.

This is the first time I’ve seen covid compared to smallpox beyond the fact they are both viruses where vaccination is available, same as many others

Therefore trying to use Smallpox vaccination mandate as an argument for Covid vaccination mandate just makes you look ignorant of historical fact.

Can I add the same but for people comparing vaccination mandates to the holocaust?

Hear, hear LittlePorcupine

@Heartdogs

Has one person claimed a similarity and this thread is in answer to them?

There's been a couple of threads about Austria and the mandating of covid vaccine and whether this could or should be done here in UK. Someone always pops up to say but what about Smallpox, that was a mandatory vaccine. Well yes it was, but smallpox was 30 times more deadly than Covid, so I'm saying stop using that to bolster the argument for mandates.

@LobsterNapkin

People tend to say things like, would you let smallpox run rampant without mandating vaccination.

But it's really not that similar.

Exactly that.

@PeterPomegranate

This is the first time I’ve seen covid compared to smallpox beyond the fact they are both viruses where vaccination is available, same as many others

I'm on another chat board where it gets mentioned at least once a day.

They are super mad on there though.

Smallpox is often mentioned on here now, I'm not surprised though, it is a bit nuts on here.

Completely agree. So many people saying ‘it’s not flu!’ when those comparisons were made early on and now we get comparisons to small pox and Ebola to justify passports and mandates. It’s far closer to flu than it is to either of those!

Yes, it's being compared to Smallpox, Ebola and even drunk driving and not wearing seatbelts but mention flu and everyone is shouting Covid is not flu.

We can't compare SARS-COV-2 to other viruses that closely. Not even to the original SARS! It certainly isn't like flu, either. Most people shouting don't know the first thing about viruses.

Stop comparing covid to smallpox, and stop comparing it to flu.

Let's try to deal with covid as it is.

The only time I've seen anyone compare COVID to smallpox was an antivaxxer friend on Facebook claiming that there were actually massive issues with how the smallpox vaccine was distributed and it wasn't as good as people remembered (he was saying we shouldn't have vaccinated against smallpox either as it wasn't as bad). At the time I had 2 thoughts:

1. The friend in question is too young to have any idea what having smallpox would be like or how people responded to being able to have a vaccine at the time.
2. I didn't think he had any grasp on the reality of how bad smallpox actually was (30% death rate apparently is still better than vaccine for an antivaxxer).

It's mainly compared to wearing seatbelts though

I think Polio is a better example, some people caught it and didn't even know, others had a cold, many died and many many more were left with life altering changes to their health.

We don't know what the long term effects could be. And that's probably the first time in history we have a vaccination without knowing long term damage.

Yanbu

The point is that the smallpox vaccination is an exemplar for vaccinated programmes, and that people welcomed it and trusted the scientists and medics.

Contrast that with the covid vaccination response of low take up, not trusting the scientists and medics and people dying and getting long covid un-necessarily.

The diseases themselves are entirely different of course and can't be compared. It's all about the vaccination programmes.

Does that help ?

@ablutiions

The point is that the smallpox vaccination is an exemplar for vaccinated programmes, and that people welcomed it and trusted the scientists and medics.

Contrast that with the covid vaccination response of low take up, not trusting the scientists and medics and people dying and getting long covid un-necessarily.

The diseases themselves are entirely different of course and can't be compared. It's all about the vaccination programmes.

Does that help ?

Not really no, but I doubt it was meant to.

Imo, death rate really doesn't matter. Even the death rate is low, still people are dying unnecessarily. Also the long term effect of the virus is still unknown.
Vaccine is part of the solution to get out of this pandemic, and more people are vaccinated, we are close to the end of this, that's all that matters, imo.

small pox was never a mandatory vaccination.
(at least not in the Uk)

I am old enough that they were still doing smallpox vaccinations. Both my brothers had it, but I didn't, because I had exzema, so it wasn't recommended.