;

Vaccination



  • 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.



  • 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.


  • 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. 



  • 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. 



  • 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."


  • 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.



  • 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.


  • 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 The effort was largely superseded by the more effective and safer Jenner vaccination, but was a foundational public health experiment that pays dividends today.



  • 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."