Content note: gore (image of child with smallpox)
Forty-six years ago today, smallpox was declared officially eradicated worldwide. Although several other diseases such as Guinea worm are getting close, smallpox remains one of only two diseases we’ve eradicated, and the only one affecting humans. Fatality rates are estimated to have been around 30% throughout most of our history; in the last 100 years of its existence alone it killed roughly half a billion people, and the survivors often suffered from permanent scarring, disfigurement, and blindness.
Ironically, it’s much more difficult to make an infectious disease seem like an inhuman monster than it is to demonize an actual human being. Our social brains are wired to associate words like “evil” with creepy grins and mustache-twirling, not complex bundles of chemicals that barely even count as “alive.” But make no mistake: the true face of Evil doesn’t have a mustache to twirl, and it doesn’t have pointy fangs or glowing red eyes, either. It looks like this:
Although we’ve won this battle, the war has barely begun. Evil takes countless forms and has many slaves and servants. But for today, please take a few minutes and try to fully appreciate the scale of this first great victory. Together, we faced down one of the Ancient, Faceless Evils: a monster far more deadly than a dragon, more ruthless than the wickedest king, more horrifying and insidious than any phantom, more prolific than any curse. We faced an Elder God of misery and death–a nameless, bodiless, heartless terror, born from chaos accumulated over eons of time, as seemingly invincible as the sun or the sea for most of human history–and we killed it.
Slain. Defeated. Extinct.
Only one, so far. There are countless more. But it’s a pretty good start.
In Search of Secrets 
