Let's not pretend: it was a wildly popular view since the invention of vaccines, because the central thesis of vaccination is a numbers game; an epidemic or pan

Let's not pretend: it was a wildly popular view since the invention of vaccines, because the central thesis of vaccination is a numbers game; an epidemic or pandemic can be stopped once the immunity of a population reaches a certain threshold. This was recognized in 1905 with the Jacobson v Massachusetts decision, in the 1950s-1960s with mass polio immunization (resulting in the deaths of hundreds of children to prevent the infection of hundreds of thousands in the US), and today with required MMR vaccines to attend public schools. The view that one should be able to opt out of vaccination programs is the novel one.