[extropy-chat] Are vaccinations useless?

[Keith Henson]

At 10:33 AM 3/16/2006 -0600, Rafal wrote:
>On 3/14/06, "Hal Finney" <hal at finney.org> wrote:

snip

> > Keep in mind that it was you who asked to focus on smallpox vaccinations!
> > That inherently requires us to discuss the 19th century.  What do you
> > think about the evidence I quoted claiming that 20th-century vaccinations
> > provided only a limited benefit, totally around 18 months of added 
> lifespan?
> > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2006-March/025701.html
> >
>### I would tentatively accept it. Most of the diseases for which
>vaccines were developed in the last century were either not very
>common (symptomatic polio), or do not kill often (chickenpox). I
>focused on smallpox after Robin indicated he doesn't think
>vaccinations made much difference in the change of frequency of
>infectious disease, and smallpox makes in my opinion a great example
>to the contrary.

If we did not have a vaccine against smallpox what would we do?

I cite SARS as an example where the only course available for stopping it 
was quarantine.

Anyone know when quarantine came to be common?

Keith Henson