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Look how long it took for people in the Western world to unanimously accept that vaccines do indeed work and to comply with national immunization programs to pr
by WJW 3y ago
Look how long it took for people in the Western world to unanimously accept that vaccines do indeed work and to comply with national immunization programs to protect those with compromised immune systems on whom the vaccines won't work.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoI don’t think the smallpox vaccine for instance was particularly controversial? There were already several states in Europe which required compulsory vaccination before 1810 a few decades after it was developed. I think it seemed like a no-brainer to most at least slightly educated people in the 19th century (after all everyone back then had grown up seeing loads of people around them dying from all kinds of nowadays easily preventable diseases).
- WJW 3y agoSmallpox vaccines were quite controversial at the time and opponents went for much the same disinformation tactics as with the covid vaccines. For example, rumors that cow heads would start sprouting from your body were published (https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/07/375598652/a-cow-head-will-not-erupt-from-your-body-if-you-get-a-smallpox-vaccine https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/07/3755986...) in popular media. There were also Church leaders saying that it was immoral to intervene in God's will in this way: if He decided you should get smallpox then that was your fate. It's not so far from people fearing that COVID vaccines were full of microchips to control your brains, or that it was all a mass sterilization campaign organized by the deep state or whatever.