Bavarian Nordic

I have read several times that the effectiveness of the smallpox vaccine against monkeypox was over 85%. The number comes from the CDC website information about monkeypox which most of us take as authoritative.

I know that I’m probably rushing a little bit to talk about monkeypox and a potential vaccine, given that there have been only two hundred confirmed and suspected cases in the world (as of the date of this article), but there are some troubling issues with this outbreak including a much higher infectivity rate.

If those of us who have received the smallpox vaccine (which was at least 40 years ago for the youngest of us) retain 85% effectiveness against monkeypox, then I’m going to worry a lot less. However, even though that number was posted by the CDC, they gave no links to peer-reviewed articles that support that number. And it was unclear whether they meant the modern smallpox vaccines or the ancient vaccine that nearly 100% of us received decades ago.

So, I’m going to dig into it because I think we should know. Plus the more accurate information we have, the better we are going to deal with the inevitable anti-vaccine tropes, memes, and outright lies that will soon appear across the internet.