Source: Brownstone Institute
by Eyal Shahar
“In my epidemiology coursework, many years ago, I was taught that the smallpox vaccine had eradicated that dreadful disease. It was common knowledge, so I did not question the claim. They did not tell me about favorable time trends in the natural course of other infectious diseases for which there was no vaccine, nor about the correlation of those trends with improved living conditions, sanitation, personal hygiene, and nutrition. The unexplained transition from the severe form of smallpox (variola major) to the mild form (variola minor) in the Western world was not mentioned. All the credit was given to the smallpox vaccine. Of course, no randomized trial of that vaccine was ever conducted. There was, however, a natural experiment in Yugoslavia in 1972—a short-lived outbreak of smallpox with a total of 175 infected people and 35 deaths.” (03/04/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-of-the-past-smallpox-in-yugoslavia-1972/