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A Brief History of Anti-Vaccine Movements
No, this is not a new phenomenon
Smallpox was one of the worst diseases humans had to face on a regular basis. It regularly killed three in ten people, it would strike seemingly at random and seemingly without warning. For years, people would live in fear of smallpox. Even those who did not die from the terrible disease were often left disfigured and scarred from the ordeal. Smallpox is also one of the primary diseases that absolutely decimated native populations in North American and South America during the European conquests. Smallpox had been around for as long as humanity began keeping records of diseases going back 10,000 years.
It is no surprise then that smallpox was one of the first diseases that people began working on a vaccine for in earnest. If smallpox could be eradicated it would be a boon for all humanity. That is why in the late 18th century, scientists began to experiment with different ideas that eventually led to the modern science of vaccines.
But as long as there have been vaccines, there has been massive countervailing push back. Anti-vaccine movements and vaccine hesitancy are nothing new and are as old as the science of vaccines themselves.
