Vials labeled ‘smallpox’ are found in Pennsylvania laboratory
A smallpox pandemic would be orders of magnitude more deadly than COVID. COVID has a very low death rate and is comparable to the flu, whereas Smallpox kills 30% of people it infects and disfigures an even higher percentage. And my understanding is that it is just as contagious (may be wrong on this).<p>Read up on Operation Dark Winter (2001 era wargame of a US smallpox outbreak) for details on how this might play out. Spoiler alert - nothing good happens to humanity.<p>EDIT: I appear to have pissed off a lot of people by comparing COVID to the flu. I apologize, I simply meant that COVID is a lot closer to the flu than it is to smallpox. I am vaccinated and wear a mask everywhere, I am not trying to &quot;downplay COVID&quot; or whatever.