In Search of Secrets

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: