[notch656a]

And the reason we pursued vaccination rigorously enough to eradicate it was because as you say it is very deadly and very contagious.

Something with a mortality rate of 30+% and kills children at orders of magnitude higher rate than COVID has is far easier to convince the world populace to vaccinate for than something with 1-2 order of magnitude lower CFR.

So you can most 100%, certainly say, it was eradicated because it is so deadly. If only say 0.5% of people died from it, disproportionately the elderly those with comorbidities, eradicating smallpox would have been a hell of a lot harder to get worldwide vaccinations on board. A hell of a lot.