We should not dismiss the possibility of eradicating COVID-19: Comparison with smallpox

This article was inspired by the video ‘Can we get rid of Covid-19 forever?’ by Vox. You can check it out here.

Smallpox is the only human disease we have ever completely eradicated; therefore, it upholds a golden standard for disease eradication. It used four factors that completely eliminated the virus: a vaccine, absence of animal vectors, global effort, and contact tracing and isolation. Depending on these factors, we can change the fate of COVID-19 and work towards eradication.

Image by Canva

Vaccines

First, let’s analyze the availability of vaccines. Vaccinations are essential to stimulate a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease¹. A scientist named Edward Jenner pioneered the concept of vaccines and devised a new technique to battle smallpox in the late 1700s by developing the world’s first vaccine: the smallpox vaccine.

Credit: Edward Jenner. Oil painting. Wellcome Collection.

Before vaccines were developed, the only way you could develop immunity was from catching a disease; however, vaccines have proven to be considerably less risky and much more…