Higher nucleotide identities were found among ECTVs (99.97%-99.99%) and between VARV-Garcia1966 (
variola minor) and VARV-India1967 (variola major) (99.68%).
"At that time Henry said 'I'm not going to allow you to work with variola major, which is the nasty smallpox, you're going to do this experimental work with
variola minor'.
Improvements in health have bettered the human condition enormously, and Pinker tells us that his favourite sentence in the whole English language comes from Wikipedia: "Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and
Variola minor." The word was is what he likes.
Epidemic of
variola minor in a suburb of Sao Paulo.
Aside from its great size and the fact that it bordered on every state in the region, in the middle of the 1960s it was the only country with endemic smallpox, for the most part
variola minor. Brazil had a long history of combating smallpox dating from the 19th century, though the disease had dropped off the public health agenda by the 1930s.
(16) Apart from admitting no direct link of the loss of infectivity for people, this statement makes it clear that the tests were conducted on the mildest form of smallpox, alastrim, or
Variola minor. Jonathan Tucker described the difference thus: Variola major caused a serious disease that killed between 10 percent and 30 percent of its victims, whereas
variola minor gave rise to a much milder illness called alastrim, with a case mortality rate of less than 1 percent.
variola minor - a mild form of smallpox caused by a less virulent form of the virus