You're listening to Shortwave, from NPR.

Hey, short waivers, Regina Barber here with a special guest, Dr. Selene Gounder.

Hey, Selene.

Hi, Gina.

So, Selene, you're an epidemiologist with decades of experience working with HIV and tuberculosis

in Brazil and South Africa, Ebola and West Africa, and COVID-19 in New York City.

And most recently, you've been looking into the history of smallpox as a part of a

eradicating smallpox the second season of your podcast, Epidemic.

Yeah, so let's just dive into the smallpox picture.

Smallpox is a deadly virus.

It's been around for millennia, at least since the third century BC in the Egyptian Empire.

And at one point, killed almost one in three people who had it.

In the 20th century alone, there were 300 million deaths, particularly in South America,

Asia and Africa.

Right.

And patients got high fevers, body aches, rashes, and fluid filled sores in their mouths and

on their body.

And it was really painful and highly contagious.

People never believed that the world would be free of smallpox, especially India.

There's no reason to believe you could cure it.

Any outbreak was an emergency.

And so for basically hundreds of years, people thought it would be impossible to get rid

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