I bear a smallpox vaccination scar on my left shoulder from being inoculated in 1972 as a 6yo. We were emigrating from Scotland to New Zealand via Singapore where smallpox still existed. We also decamped from the plane into Calcutta airport while it was being cleaned, refuelled and reprovisioned.
The elimination of it in the wild, cemeteries excepted. Is a shining example of what medical science can achieve when public acceptance and fear are strong.
People today have little idea of the fear diseases such as smallpox, polio etc used to cause. The Norfolk marshes used to host malaria as well remember.
Vaccination is credited with hard numbers to have saved more human lives than any other medical intervention. Those who live comfortable lives in the modern world who think vaccines are dangerous are dangerously complacent.
Those of us who grew up in a world where travel meant possible exposure to nasty diseases (we caught bad gastroenteritis in Singapore, I ended up in an isolation room in a NZ hospital as my initial introduction to the country).
I don’t think vaccines are more dangerous than smallpox, but I do think vaccinations are more dangerous than the common cold.
I’m glad that all of the oldies are getting the vaccine, because life will return to normal, but I’d much rather have the virus proper. As for children we don’t know if the chances of illness from the vaccine are lower than the smaller than 1 in a million chance of dying from the virus.
I’m all for the major vaccines, because they tend to target the nastiest stuff first. Coronavirus has been targetted not because it is nasty, but because it is new.
On the flipside, if the novel approaches to vaccine science pan out as intended, they may save us all sorts of trouble in the future, should something nastier come along.
Covid is not the common cold – yet. I dare say it will be. I have only once in my lifetime (58) known of a person (a peer) who had the flu which knocked her for 6 but has been otherwise unscathed. As for Covid! The number of people I know who have been hospitalised or who gave had it or who gave lost relatives – well would you like a list? I don’t doubt in time that it will learn to live with us like a lot of viruses. But please stop disrespecting the people who are dealing with this and inferring they are liars.
Children have a less than one in a million chance of dying? “On Sep 10, children made up only about 1.7% of total COVID-19 hospitalizations, with roughly 2.0% of infected children requiring hospitalization. Similarly, children accounted for 0.07% of total deaths, and their death rate was only 0.01%.” – CIDRAP, University of Minnesota Small numbers, which could be even smaller once asymptomatic infections are factored in, but less than one in a million?
Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report, American Academy of Pediatrics, data up to December 3. Hospitalizations (24 states and NYC reported)* Children were 1.1%-3.0% of total reported hospitalizations, and between 0.3%-4.9% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization Mortality (43 states and NYC reported)* Children were 0.00%-0.23% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 15 states reported zero child deaths In states reporting, 0.00%-0.11% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.
Whatever the exact death rate it’s far less than Influenza, RSV, and all of the other common childhood bugs. In Canada, more kids have died of being struck by lightning than have died of COVID, and the lightning victims were not severely compromised when they were electrocuted.
I’ll have to check those stats out. But given that the WHO was saying roughly 0.2% infection fatality overall, and IFR falls by a factor of 10 per decade 0.11% for children seems extreme. I suspect “0.00%-0.11% of all child COVID-19 cases” refers to the CFR not the IFR. When comparing dangers of vaccination (which are likely to be low but not noexistent) the IFR would be the more useful statistic.
0.002%for children aged 10 according to:
Assessing the AgeSpecificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications
That is 1 in 50000, so not 1 in a million, but I imagine that number will come down, as IFRs always do for some reason
A vaccine for Covid-19 is a vaccine for the health systems as much as for the individual. Without lockdowns, closures, masks, and, ultimately, vaccines, the health systems would collapse. ICU beds filled with Covid-19 patients displace the cancer patients. When all the ventilators are keeping Covid patients alive, the child with an asthma attack is out of luck. That, not the kill ratio or the infection rate, is what keeps doctors awake at night.
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Every vaccine has some number of people opposed to taking it. With Covid, it may actually be helpful to have some fairly large number of people willing not to take it and to make way for those who do want it. No one should be forced to take the vaccine.
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
What I really don’t understand at all is the overlap between opposing lockdown and opposing vaccination. Basic reasoning tells us that successful vaccination militates against the need for lockdown. Surely – surely! – if you oppose lockdown, you should want vaccines to succeed. Right?
Of all the known human coronaviruses, COVID-19’s is most similar to SARS. I guess all the lockdowns and disruptions to international travel were unnecessary in dealing with that too.
SARS seems to have just disappeared. Oddly we don’t actually know how deadly SARS is, because we have no idea how many people got it. At the time we assumed that SARS was transmissable only by symptomatic people, but we were probably wrong.
I would agree that they too were unnecessary. These coronaviruses seem to have a similar pattern of peaking then tapering off and becoming part of the background – whatever we do.
Even supposing your premise is sound, your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise.
Moreover, you’re missing my point. It’s highly arguable that the lockdown cure is worse than the Covid disease. This being so, surely we should support a measure i.e. vaccination which militates against the need – whether genuine or merely perceived – for lockdown.
I don’t think basic reasoning really enters into it. COVID vaccinations/lockdowns are a bad idea because A and B, links provided. So you check out the links, and A doesn’t back up what they’re saying, while the links in B don’t back B up. Aha, comes the reply, ignoring and moving on from A and B, but what about C and D, links provided. And so on and so on. And half the links are to a single doctor with a dodgy reputation, hardly a conclusive guarantee that what they’re saying is good science. It truly seems to me that many have decided, for whatever reasons, that both lockdowns and vaccinations are wrong, and then trawled the internet for anything that might at first glance appear to justify their stance. Of which there is plenty if you’re not too bothered whether it does, since there’s plenty more where it came from. Which isn’t to say either lockdowns or vaccinations are without problems, but this phenomenon of furiously opposing both, and seeing malign intentions and conspiracies behind them, often seems based on something entirely other than reason.
Why on earth would anyone be skeptical of lockdowns and the novel Rna vaccine? mmmhhh let’s see: Maybe because the 2.2 million Covid deaths (United States) and 500,000 (U.K) projected by Ferguson’s model, which were instrumental in governmental policy decision-making, were massively downgraded half way into march, while the policies weren’t. Whoops! If lockdowns are so efficient how do you explain that some of the countries that had the most authoritarian lockdowns, also have the highest rate of death per million? how do you explain that most asian countries that didn’t enforce any lockdowns have very low casualties and other like Sweden had a peak in mortality but are still faring way better than the UK/France/Belgium for instance? Those mitigated results are obviously a sign that locking down people is not significant enough of a measure in itself when it comes to preventing death and propagation. Exploring other avenues would be vital but as long governments and “health experts” are double downing on this single approach, all other avenues are shut down. And let’s examine the vaccination. Problem is that the defenders of the Covid-19 vaccination keep pretending we are just talking about a regular vaccine instead of a novel technology. First, 99.6% of the pop survives Covid-19 when infected. Despite this optimistic number, governments are planning on inoculating millions of otherwise healthy people with a vaccine that is completely experimental, that will interfere with the coding of your immune system on the RNA level. It has never been done before on that scale and the trials were rushed. Cherry on top, pharmaceutical compagnies are waiving any liabilities, governments will be responsible in case of lawsuits i.e the taxpayer. And they are thinking of ways to mandate it. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. How can you pretend those above mentioned “ABCD” don’t add up?Where is your”basic reasoning”? Good reasoning involves observing an issue from different angles, but how can you pretend to reason if you dismiss the legitimacy of a proper debate by shrugging the other side off? I am afraid you may yourself be guilty of seeking out the information that will comfort your biased perception.
New Zealand doesn’t have a high death rate. Neither does Finland or Norway or Denmark. Australia? Which Asian countries are you referring to? You have no data to back up your opinion.
Japan I think. 2000 deaths despite 49% of Tokyo showing antibodies at a single point in time during the Summer – I think they reckoned 61% had had the virus in Tokyo.
New Zealand and Australia had warning, on account of it striking Italy during their Summer. If I had my way, after vaccinating the vulnerable here, I’d ship all the rest of vaccine supplies over to New Zealand and Oz, where it’ll save the most lives.
Oh my, Do you want to go through all the countries in the world? I didn’t speak of New Zealand nor Norway nor Denmark. I have data, it’s readily available for everyone to see the number of deaths/million on Worldometer. As for the Asian countries: Hong Kong, Japan or South Korea didn’t lock their people down, to name a few. What I pointed to is the simple fact that there are mixed results with countries who imposed a lockdown= some have a high rate of death and some don’t, which suggests that this single approach isn’t effective in preventing the spread. A lot of pandemic specialists and health workers have justifiably noted that targeted tests and an earl/easily accessible protocole to treat the most vulnerable (way before hospitalization with combo of antiviral + vitamins+Zinc) has been a successful approach in many of those countries with low death rates. This strategy was crucially absent in many of the countries that have had a heavy death toll. See? There are many other ways to handle a sanitary crisis than locking your people down until you develop a half assed vaccine.
I agree we are not treating the virus more effectively before hospitalisation takes place – a many pronged approach could work. I and my family have taken all the recommended vits from the outset – unfortunately it didn’t stop us getting the virus but they may have helped in fighting it off. I don’t like lockdowns but am not vehemently against them. Sadly the UK has done little or nothing to protect the vulnerable which is why they resort to these measures – also there are too many people who refuse to alter any part of their behaviour to avert spread of disease. Lack of cooperation all around I feel.
Thanks for the reply. It seems to me that the governments that put tremendous pressure on their people, create irrevocable economical damage, aggravate toxic social tensions, by elevating the docile citizens and blaming the skeptics for their failed strategy, have to be denounced. It’s not fair to constantly ask for the working class and the poorest to bear the brunt of this crisis and also demand absolute subservience when you haven’t done anything to deserve it.
As a doc who is first on the list to get the new mRNA vaccine (probably in a few weeks here in Canada), I am nervous for the first time about getting a vaccine. I prefer not to be a guinea pig. There is a saying by one of the fathers of vaccinology: “I don’t breathe a sigh of relief until the first 30 million doses have been given”. ie: we don’t know the real side effect profile until a few years, and many millions of patients, into a program. Particularly with this being an mRNA vaccine as opposed to a typical attenuated virus/virus fragment vaccine, there is real cause for vaccine hesitancy. I will dutifully get mine, but were I not a frontline healthcare worker I would likely be waiting a bit. “Be not the first to try new things, nor the last to discard the old”
I wish the pro-vaccine propaganda machine wasn’t going into action, it’s likely to scare people off. By the time the 25% of super willing have had the vaccine the rest will be able to make up their minds, and as for the 2% anti-vaxxers, you can’t win ’em all.
I am glad I’m last on the list though. I suspect that both Covid and the vaccine are rather low risk as far as I’m concerned, but since I think I had Covid, I’m in no great hurry to get vaccinated.
Let them vaccinate the old, give them an extra 5 years of life, with no fear of long term harm.
Fair enough, you have some doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness, but you’re not simultaneously opposed to lockdown and opposed to vaccination as a point of principle – you still WANT it to succeed, right?
Ian Perkins
3 years ago
Some things don’t change much. “Mather’s home was attacked with a grenade, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had abuse hurled at her in the newspapers and in the streets.”
Michael Hanson
3 years ago
So, listen to the cranks and be suspicious of the medical establishment!
That’s silly – they can’t all be right. Evidently some are right and we have sensible theories about evolution and the spherical nature of the Earth.
Luis Vassallo
3 years ago
To complement this article may be good to remember the Balmis Expedition from 1803 to 1806. Organized and funded by Charles IV of Spain. In this voyage Dr. Balmis took 22 orphans as successive carriers of the virus, and launched a massive vaccination campaign in America and the Philippines that saved millions of lives. They even went into some cities in China. On his way back to Spain in 1806, Balmis offered the vaccine to the British authorities in Saint Helena, despite the ongoing conflict between Spain and Great Britain.
Great article. As a doc I am always fascinated by the history of medicine. I had forgotten the root of “vaccination” was the same as “vache”. I can’t hear the word “vache” without thinking of Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail, with the famous “fetcher la vache” scene.
Penny Gallagher
3 years ago
Thanks just from a historical point of view a fascinating article.
I bear a smallpox vaccination scar on my left shoulder from being inoculated in 1972 as a 6yo. We were emigrating from Scotland to New Zealand via Singapore where smallpox still existed. We also decamped from the plane into Calcutta airport while it was being cleaned, refuelled and reprovisioned.
The elimination of it in the wild, cemeteries excepted. Is a shining example of what medical science can achieve when public acceptance and fear are strong.
People today have little idea of the fear diseases such as smallpox, polio etc used to cause. The Norfolk marshes used to host malaria as well remember.
Vaccination is credited with hard numbers to have saved more human lives than any other medical intervention. Those who live comfortable lives in the modern world who think vaccines are dangerous are dangerously complacent.
Those of us who grew up in a world where travel meant possible exposure to nasty diseases (we caught bad gastroenteritis in Singapore, I ended up in an isolation room in a NZ hospital as my initial introduction to the country).
I don’t think vaccines are more dangerous than smallpox, but I do think vaccinations are more dangerous than the common cold.
I’m glad that all of the oldies are getting the vaccine, because life will return to normal, but I’d much rather have the virus proper. As for children we don’t know if the chances of illness from the vaccine are lower than the smaller than 1 in a million chance of dying from the virus.
I’m all for the major vaccines, because they tend to target the nastiest stuff first. Coronavirus has been targetted not because it is nasty, but because it is new.
On the flipside, if the novel approaches to vaccine science pan out as intended, they may save us all sorts of trouble in the future, should something nastier come along.
Covid is not the common cold – yet. I dare say it will be. I have only once in my lifetime (58) known of a person (a peer) who had the flu which knocked her for 6 but has been otherwise unscathed. As for Covid! The number of people I know who have been hospitalised or who gave had it or who gave lost relatives – well would you like a list? I don’t doubt in time that it will learn to live with us like a lot of viruses. But please stop disrespecting the people who are dealing with this and inferring they are liars.
The common cold barb is a bit silly. Covid-19 is not a common cold. As I understand it, children are not being vaccinated anyway.
Children have a less than one in a million chance of dying?
“On Sep 10, children made up only about 1.7% of total COVID-19 hospitalizations, with roughly 2.0% of infected children requiring hospitalization. Similarly, children accounted for 0.07% of total deaths, and their death rate was only 0.01%.” – CIDRAP, University of Minnesota
Small numbers, which could be even smaller once asymptomatic infections are factored in, but less than one in a million?
Kind of old numbers. The second wave infections would not be be included in your numbers.
Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report, American Academy of Pediatrics, data up to December 3.
Hospitalizations (24 states and NYC reported)*
Children were 1.1%-3.0% of total reported hospitalizations, and between 0.3%-4.9% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization
Mortality (43 states and NYC reported)*
Children were 0.00%-0.23% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 15 states reported zero child deaths
In states reporting, 0.00%-0.11% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.
Whatever the exact death rate it’s far less than Influenza, RSV, and all of the other common childhood bugs. In Canada, more kids have died of being struck by lightning than have died of COVID, and the lightning victims were not severely compromised when they were electrocuted.
I’ll have to check those stats out. But given that the WHO was saying roughly 0.2% infection fatality overall, and IFR falls by a factor of 10 per decade 0.11% for children seems extreme. I suspect “0.00%-0.11% of all child COVID-19 cases” refers to the CFR not the IFR. When comparing dangers of vaccination (which are likely to be low but not noexistent) the IFR would be the more useful statistic.
0.002%for children aged 10 according to:
Assessing the AgeSpecificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications
That is 1 in 50000, so not 1 in a million, but I imagine that number will come down, as IFRs always do for some reason
Without checking, I think you’re quite right, especially regarding IFR/CFR.
But as you say, 1 in 50,000 still isn’t 1 in a million.
A vaccine for Covid-19 is a vaccine for the health systems as much as for the individual. Without lockdowns, closures, masks, and, ultimately, vaccines, the health systems would collapse. ICU beds filled with Covid-19 patients displace the cancer patients. When all the ventilators are keeping Covid patients alive, the child with an asthma attack is out of luck. That, not the kill ratio or the infection rate, is what keeps doctors awake at night.
Every vaccine has some number of people opposed to taking it. With Covid, it may actually be helpful to have some fairly large number of people willing not to take it and to make way for those who do want it. No one should be forced to take the vaccine.
What I really don’t understand at all is the overlap between opposing lockdown and opposing vaccination. Basic reasoning tells us that successful vaccination militates against the need for lockdown. Surely – surely! – if you oppose lockdown, you should want vaccines to succeed. Right?
Not necessarily: Covid-19, by many accounts, is similar to other coronaviruses and therefore lockdowns and vaccines are not needed.
Of all the known human coronaviruses, COVID-19’s is most similar to SARS. I guess all the lockdowns and disruptions to international travel were unnecessary in dealing with that too.
SARS seems to have just disappeared. Oddly we don’t actually know how deadly SARS is, because we have no idea how many people got it. At the time we assumed that SARS was transmissable only by symptomatic people, but we were probably wrong.
I would agree that they too were unnecessary. These coronaviruses seem to have a similar pattern of peaking then tapering off and becoming part of the background – whatever we do.
Even supposing your premise is sound, your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise.
Moreover, you’re missing my point. It’s highly arguable that the lockdown cure is worse than the Covid disease. This being so, surely we should support a measure i.e. vaccination which militates against the need – whether genuine or merely perceived – for lockdown.
O.K. I see now – vaccinating would be a way of curing lockdown not Covid. I like it – but not enough to take the vaccine myself.
I don’t think basic reasoning really enters into it. COVID vaccinations/lockdowns are a bad idea because A and B, links provided. So you check out the links, and A doesn’t back up what they’re saying, while the links in B don’t back B up. Aha, comes the reply, ignoring and moving on from A and B, but what about C and D, links provided. And so on and so on. And half the links are to a single doctor with a dodgy reputation, hardly a conclusive guarantee that what they’re saying is good science.
It truly seems to me that many have decided, for whatever reasons, that both lockdowns and vaccinations are wrong, and then trawled the internet for anything that might at first glance appear to justify their stance. Of which there is plenty if you’re not too bothered whether it does, since there’s plenty more where it came from.
Which isn’t to say either lockdowns or vaccinations are without problems, but this phenomenon of furiously opposing both, and seeing malign intentions and conspiracies behind them, often seems based on something entirely other than reason.
Well said, especially your description of the A-B-C-D phenomenology of anti-vaccine apologetics.
Why on earth would anyone be skeptical of lockdowns and the novel Rna vaccine? mmmhhh let’s see: Maybe because the 2.2 million Covid deaths (United States) and 500,000 (U.K) projected by Ferguson’s model, which were instrumental in governmental policy decision-making, were massively downgraded half way into march, while the policies weren’t. Whoops!
If lockdowns are so efficient how do you explain that some of the countries that had the most authoritarian lockdowns, also have the highest rate of death per million? how do you explain that most asian countries that didn’t enforce any lockdowns have very low casualties and other like Sweden had a peak in mortality but are still faring way better than the UK/France/Belgium for instance? Those mitigated results are obviously a sign that locking down people is not significant enough of a measure in itself when it comes to preventing death and propagation. Exploring other avenues would be vital but as long governments and “health experts” are double downing on this single approach, all other avenues are shut down.
And let’s examine the vaccination. Problem is that the defenders of the Covid-19 vaccination keep pretending we are just talking about a regular vaccine instead of a novel technology. First, 99.6% of the pop survives Covid-19 when infected. Despite this optimistic number, governments are planning on inoculating millions of otherwise healthy people with a vaccine that is completely experimental, that will interfere with the coding of your immune system on the RNA level. It has never been done before on that scale and the trials were rushed. Cherry on top, pharmaceutical compagnies are waiving any liabilities, governments will be responsible in case of lawsuits i.e the taxpayer. And they are thinking of ways to mandate it. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
How can you pretend those above mentioned “ABCD” don’t add up?Where is your”basic reasoning”? Good reasoning involves observing an issue from different angles, but how can you pretend to reason if you dismiss the legitimacy of a proper debate by shrugging the other side off? I am afraid you may yourself be guilty of seeking out the information that will comfort your biased perception.
New Zealand doesn’t have a high death rate. Neither does Finland or Norway or Denmark. Australia? Which Asian countries are you referring to? You have no data to back up your opinion.
Japan I think. 2000 deaths despite 49% of Tokyo showing antibodies at a single point in time during the Summer – I think they reckoned 61% had had the virus in Tokyo.
New Zealand and Australia had warning, on account of it striking Italy during their Summer. If I had my way, after vaccinating the vulnerable here, I’d ship all the rest of vaccine supplies over to New Zealand and Oz, where it’ll save the most lives.
Russia and China mightn’t be too happy about their vaccines being shipped off to two Five Eyes countries.
Good idea.
Oh my, Do you want to go through all the countries in the world? I didn’t speak of New Zealand nor Norway nor Denmark. I have data, it’s readily available for everyone to see the number of deaths/million on Worldometer. As for the Asian countries: Hong Kong, Japan or South Korea didn’t lock their people down, to name a few. What I pointed to is the simple fact that there are mixed results with countries who imposed a lockdown= some have a high rate of death and some don’t, which suggests that this single approach isn’t effective in preventing the spread. A lot of pandemic specialists and health workers have justifiably noted that targeted tests and an earl/easily accessible protocole to treat the most vulnerable (way before hospitalization with combo of antiviral + vitamins+Zinc) has been a successful approach in many of those countries with low death rates. This strategy was crucially absent in many of the countries that have had a heavy death toll. See? There are many other ways to handle a sanitary crisis than locking your people down until you develop a half assed vaccine.
I agree we are not treating the virus more effectively before hospitalisation takes place – a many pronged approach could work. I and my family have taken all the recommended vits from the outset – unfortunately it didn’t stop us getting the virus but they may have helped in fighting it off. I don’t like lockdowns but am not vehemently against them. Sadly the UK has done little or nothing to protect the vulnerable which is why they resort to these measures – also there are too many people who refuse to alter any part of their behaviour to avert spread of disease. Lack of cooperation all around I feel.
Thanks for the reply. It seems to me that the governments that put tremendous pressure on their people, create irrevocable economical damage, aggravate toxic social tensions, by elevating the docile citizens and blaming the skeptics for their failed strategy, have to be denounced. It’s not fair to constantly ask for the working class and the poorest to bear the brunt of this crisis and also demand absolute subservience when you haven’t done anything to deserve it.
I agree that new/different solutions need to be looked at as a way forward. And we can only do that after seeing what has worked and what has failed.
As a doc who is first on the list to get the new mRNA vaccine (probably in a few weeks here in Canada), I am nervous for the first time about getting a vaccine. I prefer not to be a guinea pig. There is a saying by one of the fathers of vaccinology: “I don’t breathe a sigh of relief until the first 30 million doses have been given”. ie: we don’t know the real side effect profile until a few years, and many millions of patients, into a program. Particularly with this being an mRNA vaccine as opposed to a typical attenuated virus/virus fragment vaccine, there is real cause for vaccine hesitancy. I will dutifully get mine, but were I not a frontline healthcare worker I would likely be waiting a bit. “Be not the first to try new things, nor the last to discard the old”
You don’t have to take it.
Step aside then and let the line through.
I wish the pro-vaccine propaganda machine wasn’t going into action, it’s likely to scare people off. By the time the 25% of super willing have had the vaccine the rest will be able to make up their minds, and as for the 2% anti-vaxxers, you can’t win ’em all.
I am glad I’m last on the list though. I suspect that both Covid and the vaccine are rather low risk as far as I’m concerned, but since I think I had Covid, I’m in no great hurry to get vaccinated.
Let them vaccinate the old, give them an extra 5 years of life, with no fear of long term harm.
Fair enough, you have some doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness, but you’re not simultaneously opposed to lockdown and opposed to vaccination as a point of principle – you still WANT it to succeed, right?
Some things don’t change much. “Mather’s home was attacked with a grenade, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had abuse hurled at her in the newspapers and in the streets.”
So, listen to the cranks and be suspicious of the medical establishment!
If only every crank turned out to be right.
That’s silly – they can’t all be right.
Evidently some are right and we have sensible theories about evolution and the spherical nature of the Earth.
To complement this article may be good to remember the Balmis Expedition from 1803 to 1806. Organized and funded by Charles IV of Spain. In this voyage Dr. Balmis took 22 orphans as successive carriers of the virus, and launched a massive vaccination campaign in America and the Philippines that saved millions of lives. They even went into some cities in China. On his way back to Spain in 1806, Balmis offered the vaccine to the British authorities in Saint Helena, despite the ongoing conflict between Spain and Great Britain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Great article. As a doc I am always fascinated by the history of medicine.
I had forgotten the root of “vaccination” was the same as “vache”. I can’t hear the word “vache” without thinking of Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail, with the famous “fetcher la vache” scene.
Thanks just from a historical point of view a fascinating article.