How many people did small pox kill before being eradicated?

by VineFynn

As far as I'm aware, the estimates of 500 million are after 1880.

WendigoWood

It's quite impossible to know the answer. You could come to a ballpark by adding up deaths from known huge smallpox plagues but there are a number of agents suspected in the Black Death and it's even possible that there were a number operating at the same time (anthrax, plague, smallpox, possibly ebola, possibly something else.) then there is the Plague of Athens. What was that? Then there is a South America.

How do you come close to a reasonable number?