The idea of giving yourself smallpox vaccine is a radical bizarro idea. The body needs some time to prepare for the real thing, and if you introduce it as a full blown version, your body doesn't react quickly enough. Somebodies are better capable than others of fighting off the actual pathage. And even cancer. But right, not everybody is able to. So there could be other approaches.
In the race for a COVID vaccine, how did a couple of companies who had never produced a successful vaccine make it to the finish line so quickly? Gregory Zuckerman talks about his book, A Shot to Save the World, with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the daring, deranged, and damaged visionaries behind one of science and medicine's great success stories.