Talk:Smallpox

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Good articleSmallpox has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
November 23, 2010Good article nomineeListed
On this day...Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on June 2, 2004, June 2, 2005, December 9, 2007, December 9, 2009, December 9, 2010, December 9, 2011, December 9, 2013, December 9, 2014, December 9, 2015, December 9, 2017, and December 9, 2019.



Change the main image

"Wikipedia is not censored" is not a good enough reason to have such a disgusting image at the top. There could be a section later in the page, with a warning that you have to click through to see that image. The main image makes me want to never visit Wikipedia again. I don't want to be forced to look at horrifying images. 91.158.66.11 (talk) 22:44, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the FAQ at the top of this page. Graham Beards (talk) 23:37, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I want to point out that the reason for the images is to give you an idea what smallpox looks like when one gets it.Cwater1 (talk) 23:42, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to mention that if you do not want to see the images then don't visit the article. If you to know more about smallpox but not want to see the image, learn how to hide certain images. See Help: Options to hide an image. Cwater1 (talk) 14:51, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia, like it or not, is the number one research resource for most internet users, on all manner of topics. We should recognise (and respect) that some visitors may be upset by certain imagery, even if they can comfortably digest the information presented in the text. Is there no mechanism for applying a 'click to see image' filter? 2A00:23C7:3119:AD01:D065:7EEC:4667:EFD6 (talk) 20:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes there is, and this is in the FAQ at the top of page. Graham Beards (talk) 21:09, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See Help:Options_to_hide_an_image#Disable_images_on_specific_pages Cwater1 (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
the image, which no one is forcing you to look at, should make you feel empathy for the suffering of this child. and after you read a paragraph or two, when you read that 300 million people were estimated to have died from smallpox in the twentieth century, you should be considering yourself lucky a) to have evaded the clutches of this disfiguring killer and b)that you live in a time and place where accurate information about this virus (and other viruses) is freely available. 70.31.166.89 (talk) 22:50, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia shouldn't make me "feel" anything. Wikipedia shouldn't make me "consider myself lucky" about anything. Wikipedia should inform and educate, and how its users respond to that information is not Wikipedia's job to dictate.
The fact is, of the several images of smallpox infections in this article, many of them are successful in portraying the horrifying disfiguration that can be caused by this disease. They are all still orders of magnitude less likely to cause a traumatically shocking reaction in the reader than the one chosen for the main image.
I'd be first in line to promote this image back to the main spot if Wikipedia had a "hide sensitive imagery" setting. But that has been talked about for over a decade. The options that actually exist today are absurd suggestions for this issue. You can either hide every image by default, which, if you think about it, is no help to people that only want to avoid the sensitive stuff. If you don't already know what smallpox is, you have no idea what you're in for. Or you can install browser scripts to block specific images once you already know what they are ... which is a solution for absolutely no one.
This feels very off-brand for Wikipedia. We can all think of subjects that don't have graphic, disturbing photo representations of that thing, and for good reason. If they did, and Smallpox was the norm instead of an outlier, there'd be a lot more pressure for a sensitive-blur setting that was on by default. I'm sure I could visit LiveLeak and find an image that is objectively "better" for the Stabbing article than the 16th-century painting that's currently there, but since common sense is the norm for Wikipedia, the painting remains. Eyevandy (talk) 19:17, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 22 December 2022

In the phrase:

It has been speculated that Egyptian traders brought smallpox to India during the 1st millennium BCE, where it remained as an endemic human disease for at least 2000 years.

The link to the endemic page should be changed to the endemic (epidemiology) page, as it is referring to "endemism" in the epidemiological sense, not the ecological sense. CannonEast (talk) 15:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for suggesting this. I have made the edit. Graham Beards (talk) 17:19, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fomites

I have modified the statement that smallpox is spread by fomites (e.g. infected clothing or blankets) in the light of A R Rao's 1950s and 1960s research which suggested that it was not. The disappearance of smallpox epidemics soon after his researches on smallpox-transmission makes his conclusion that it normally spread via the lungs difficult to check or revise, but I think his book Smallpox has to be accepted as our "best source" on this. The source cited for the contrary view is a discontinued but web-archived public information website, last revised in 2007, by the USA's National Center for Preparedness, Detection, and Control of Infectious Diseases. Despite its later date, it probably represents an earlier medical orthodoxy. I note that a later paragraph in the Wikipedia article endorses, though without citation, Rao's view that smallpox, despite its spectacular effects upon the skin, is primarily a lung disease in its mode of transmission. It is perhaps not worth including in the article a comment that the medical practice of variolation , which normally produced only a mild and prophylactic infection, suggests that the virus was also not particularly well adapted to blood-borne transmission. Marcasella (talk) 00:34, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One would need to see RS other than Rao himself supporting his 1950s research before making such a major change to the article. Rao may not have observed transmission by fomites, but other researchers have in fact observed it: "Smallpox virus can also be transmitted by fomites, such as clothing and bedding [14]. Laundry workers have developed smallpox. One study found a much higher recovery of smallpox virus from pillows and bedclothes than from air samples of the patient's coughs [17]." 2004 HouseOfChange (talk) 14:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Marcasella: Update, according to recent RS,[1][2] transmission by fomites is rare, so I now agree with you that the article shouldn't emphasize it, per WP:WEIGHT. HouseOfChange (talk) 17:32, 6 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

2023 smallpox outbreak in Bihar India

Does anyone know if the outbreak in India is actually smallpox? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/smallpox-spreads-in-bihar-village-help-comes-3-months-late/ar-AA1cOO6g PinkhamND (talk) 08:15, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's monkeypox virus. See [3]. Graham Beards (talk) 09:31, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mpox makes much more sense - Thanks! PinkhamND (talk) 14:12, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Religion slandering in article

This image description is currently just a religious slandering with an attempt to link it "Likely" to smallpox:

Likely hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic in a patient who later died. Patient described as an unvaccinated Christian Scientist, who "thought that he could by power of mind prevent smallpox."

Should be more neutral and with a respectable source mentioned: "Patient with hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic [link to source]" — Preceding unsigned comment added by XXX (talk) 04:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Change was an undocumented addition in this 25 December 2021 revision by Featous. The language is derived from the source (Archived link), but Featous replaced the caption of the image ("A patient likely suffering from hemorrhagic smallpox in a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, epidemic") with the description of the image. I'd agree that the description is irrelevant to the topic of smallpox - no other image contains such language as to the background of the patient, and the original caption was both more descriptive and concise. WP:NPOV. --Xthorgoldx (talk) 05:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Smallpox death toll

Should we add a total death toll of all the humans smallpox has killed throughout all of human history? Romulus Cyrus (talk) 16:52, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I say yes! Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 04:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-Protected Edit Request on 25 August 2023

The language applied in the 25 December 2021 page revision altered an image caption from

 A person with probable hemorrhagic smallpox. He later died of the disease.

To

 Likely hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic in a patient who later died. Patient described as an unvaccinated Christian Scientist, who "thought that he could by power of mind prevent smallpox."

The description does originate from the image source, but the description is irrelevant to the topic of the article specifically, and noticeably accusatory in comparison to all other images used in the page. Request reversion to previous caption for neutrality and conciseness.

~~~~ Xthorgoldx (talk) 05:38, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The description is sourced to the image.Graham Beards (talk) 07:02, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The previous caption was truncated from the image: "A patient likely suffering from hemorrhagic smallpox in a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, epidemic," listed as the image caption (whereas the Christian Scientist verbiage was the image description). As both descriptors are from the same source, the more tonally-neutral and concise of the two is more appropriate --Xthorgoldx (talk) 18:49, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
 Done I agree the more concise caption is more appropriate in this context. I know of no policy that requires or suggests using an image's description verbatim from what is on Wikimedia in all cases. So I've boldly made this change. -- Pinchme123 (talk) 01:15, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Decimated?

The current text states:

Because the native Amerindian population had no acquired immunity to this new disease, their peoples were decimated by epidemics.

Decimated literally means reduced by 10%. Is this the correct word when we see a few sentences later:

Case fatality rates during outbreaks in Native American populations were as high as 90%.

Should 'decimated' be changed to some other word or phrase? 'Almost wiped out'? I know this may seem picayune but I think it is important to preserve some language. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 04:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]