Vaccination

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• SOURCE: Nature
  12/5/2022
  

  How Smallpox Inoculation Brought a New Nation Together

  The need to control smallpox outbreaks helped a public-minded spirit of disease prevention to override rampant individualism in the years surrounding the American Revolution, argues historian Andrew Wehrman.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/10/2022
  

  Even for Polio, Parents were Slow to Vaccinate their Kids

  Dropping the historically unsupported contrast between the uptake of the polio and COVID vaccines by parents of young children should prompt us to stop moralizing and start considering the social, political, and economic factors, including poor healthcare access, that always hinder vaccine campaigns in the US.

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• 2/13/2022
  

  The First Smallpox Vaccinator in the 1780s Got Abuse Instead of Thanks

  by Rod Tanchanco

  Benjamin Jesty correctly intuited that exposing himself and his family to cowpox could shield them from the recurrent smallpox pandemics of England. Twenty years ahead of Edward Jenner, he became a local pariah. 

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• 12/12/2021
  

  With COVID, None of Us are Safe Until All of Us are Safe

  by Robert Brent Toplin

  Deference to the patent claims of pharmaceutical companies are slowing the urgently needed distribution of COVID vaccines to poorer nations. Residents of rich nations will pay a price as new, potentially dangerous variants like Omicron spread. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/5/2021
  

  An Illustrated History of Vaccine Requirements for Schoolchildren

  Vaccine mandates for school attendance are two centuries old. An illustrated history.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  10/15/2021
  

  Comparing Unvaccinated Kyrie Irving to HIV-Positive Magic Johnson? Not So Fast

  "Shut up and dribble" falls by the wayside when right-wing media figures can make a convenient ally out of a prominent athlete. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/5/2021
  

  Frustration, Anger, and Deaths Won't Convince the Unvaccinated

  by Matthew Newsom Kerr

  "Vaccine resisters in the 19th century significantly stymied public health efforts, and the anger felt by health officials shaped their responses — not always for the best."

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• 10/3/2021
  

  Ending COVID in Our Lifetimes Requires Seeing the Bonds of Shared Humanity

  by Michael Hogan

  "In the end, like those who sought to escape the plague in Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death,” we are all vulnerable and at risk if we do not look to see that our fellow human beings both at home and abroad are safeguarded as well."

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/27/2021
  

  The Legal Standard Encouraging Religious Exemptions to Vaccination is Baffling

  by Charles McCrary

  American courts have established sincerity of individual belief as the standard for recognizing a religious accommodation or exemption. Even though no major religions ban vaccination, this standard could still sustain widespread refusal of coronavirus vaccines. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  9/17/2021
  

  Policing Religious Exemptions to Vaccines

  A lawsuit against Creighton University, a Jesuit institution, would expand the justification for religious exemptions to vaccination from explicit declarations of opposition by a religious body to any impulse of individual conscience. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/10/2021
  

  The Limits of My Empathy for Covid Deniers

  by Tressie McMillan Cottom

  "This is a social problem with big structural issues. That does not absolve me of my responsibility for seeing the humanity in people I vehemently disagree with, but it does make me feel less guilty about being unable to save them."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/9/2021
  

  Vaccination Mandates Are an American Tradition. So Is the Backlash

  Historians Michael Willrich and Elena Conis explains the history of vaccination resistance and the civil liberties and political conflicts that have accompanied it. 

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• SOURCE: Substack
  9/10/2021
  

  If Fighting Terrorist Attacks Is a Government Responsibility, So Is Fighting a Killer Virus

  by Claire Potter

  "Vaccine refusers are killing their children and killing each other to support an extreme idea about human freedom that is unsupported in United States law."

• 
• 9/14/2021
  

  Mandates For COVID Vaccines Spark Controversy

  As Republican governors and legislatures refuse to require vaccination, the Biden administration institutes significant federal mandates. Historians discuss vaccination, choice, and public health.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/31/2021
  

  It's the Moment the Antivax Movement Has Been Waiting For

  by Tara Haelle

  The antivax movement has appropriated common-sense ideas like parental control and bodily autonomy to sow widespread fear and hostility toward the COVID-19 vaccinations.

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• SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
  8/31/2021
  

  Fear and Misinformation Plagued the Polio Vaccination Campaign, Too

  Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Neil Steinberg offers some cold comfort: media voices spreading misinformation about COVID vaccinations have clear forebears in the press.

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/19/2021
  

  There is No Precedent for the Politicization of the Pandemic

  by Howard Markel

  The COVID pandemic is going to be the future baseline case study for the social impact of pandemics, and is unfortunately likely to be a cautionary tale, says a medical historian. 

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• SOURCE: Governing
  8/5/2021
  

  The Long History of Vaccine Mandates

  by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

  President Biden's recent call for mandatory vaccination for federal workers follows the precedent set by George Washington's order to inoculate the Continental Army for smallpox.

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• 6/6/2021
  

  Paying People to Get Vaccines is an Old Idea Whose Time has Come Again

  by Margaret DeLacy

  John Haygarth devised a system for rewarding working-class residents of Chester for receiving the risky smallpox inoculation and maintaining social distance afterward. The effort was largely superseded by the more effective and safer Jenner vaccination, but was a foundational public health experiment that pays dividends today.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/1/2021
  

  Anti-Vaxxers are Claiming Centuries of Jewish Suffering to Look like Martyrs

  by Sarah E. Bond

  "Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers would have us believe that the evil of being encouraged to get a vaccine is the same as the project of ethnic labeling and cleansing undertaken by the Third Reich. It appears at first a farcical analogy, but it’s not without its dangers."