History of Vaccine Mandates

[Bootstrap]

I keep hearing claims that vaccine mandates are unprecedented. When I google "history vaccine mandates", I come up with links to articles like these. Are they accurate? If not, what do they get wrong?

The History of Vaccines: Government Regulation

The Long History of Vaccine Mandates in America: The Covid-19 pandemic has revived a debate over public health and individual liberty that goes back to colonial times.

Vaccine mandates have worked in the past. Can they overcome modern hurdles?

While some politicians have touted the new mandates as “un-American,” vaccine mandates are older than the United States itself. “General [George] Washington mandated smallpox inoculation—the precursor to the vaccine, and a more dangerous procedure—for the Revolutionary Army,” says Dorit Reiss, a law professor who specializes in vaccine policy at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. “And I don't think it’s fair to describe Washington as un-American.”

In 1809, Massachusetts enacted a law that gave the state’s municipal boards of health the authority to require smallpox vaccinations for people older than 21. “Throughout the 19th century, individual employers would sometimes insist on proof of smallpox vaccination or infection before hiring someone who might work in their shop or home,” Conis says. That proof was usually just the bodily scar that remained on the arm or leg after vaccination.

Vaccination Mandates Are an American Tradition. So Is the Backlash.

As disease and death reigned around them, some Americans declared that they would never get vaccinated and raged at government efforts to compel them. Anti-vaccination groups spread propaganda about terrible side effects and corrupt doctors. State officials tried to ban mandates, and people made fake vaccination certificates to evade inoculation rules already in place.

The years were 1898 to 1903, and the disease was smallpox. News articles and health board reports describe crowds of parents marching to schoolhouses to demand that their unvaccinated children be allowed in, said Michael Willrich, a professor of history at Brandeis University, with some even burning their own arms with nitric acid to mimic the characteristic scar left by the smallpox vaccine.

[Ken]

How about the history of vaccine mandates in Amish country? I posted this sometime back on the other big Coronavirus thread. My mother told me about this quarantine and vaccine mandate in Belleville PA during Christmas 1942. The entire valley was completely locked down by state police until they had vaccinated everyone. My mother talked about the dairy farms having to dump their milk because not even milk trucks were getting out. This was the NYT coverage of the event.

[Soloist]

Keep in mind the same law was used to sterilize people against their will.

[Josh]

Unprecedented in my lifetime. The fact America was authoritarian in the 1940s doesn’t mean we should be today; they also used to round up people by ethnic group and put them in camps.

[Valerie]

Unprecedented in my lifetime. The fact America was authoritarian in the 1940s doesn’t mean we should be today; they also used to round up people by ethnic group and put them in camps.

So what is the answer? Is there a validity to the concerns that people have about these mandates. Some think that we're just screaming for our rights. But is there a reason to suspect there is an agenda. Is there a reason to have distrust for the government? I can see the arguments for both sides of this personally observing what I am now you certainly wouldn't want to pass on a life-threatening virus to someone would you?

Who do people trust right now? Where is their confidence?

Ancient Israel had in its law how to handle those afflicted with leprosy and they were put in their own camps. Why was that? It was highly contagious and there was no cure. Until Jesus came along-. It was not considered cruel to put them in the camps it had to protect those that didn't have leprosy. These were instructions given by the Lord.

We have witnessed evil agendas in these types of mandates in the past we don't know if there's hidden agendas we don't know if there's a global agenda many people are highly suspicious of that and produce reasons why.

[silentreader]

Two differences at least between this and smallpox, at least in my understanding.
The smallpox vaccine was not a 'leaky' vaccine, at least not to any extent, and smallpox was 'human specific' to the extent that there were no known reservoirs of smallpox in wildlife by which it could remain viable. So the possibility of eradication was real.

[Valerie]

Two differences at least between this and smallpox, at least in my understanding.
The smallpox vaccine was not a 'leaky' vaccine, at least not to any extent, and smallpox was 'human specific' to the extent that there were no known reservoirs of smallpox in wildlife by which it could remain viable. So the possibility of eradication was real.

Question- what exactly is meant by leaky vaccination with this particular group of vaccines for coronavirus? I had heard the concern early on about vaccine shedding. Is that the same thing? I know the doctors that were concerned about the shedding of the vaccines said watch out for people that have been vaccinated because you might get it from them. There are people that believe the Delta variant is actually the shedding. I don't know if that's true.

So you're saying this virus can get into wildlife which would make it impossible to eradicate?

[Ken]

Unprecedented in my lifetime. The fact America was authoritarian in the 1940s doesn’t mean we should be today; they also used to round up people by ethnic group and put them in camps.

Which is it Josh? Is America improving or declining. I've heard both from you.

[ohio jones]

So you're saying this virus can get into wildlife which would make it impossible to eradicate?

One theory of origins is that it started with wildlife (probably bats) and crossed over into humans, so it's already ineradicable.

The other possibility is that it started in a lab. Since labs are domesticated there's some small hope that it hasn't crossed over into wildlife yet, but if it does, even the lab will not be able to retrieve it.

[silentreader]

Two differences at least between this and smallpox, at least in my understanding.
The smallpox vaccine was not a 'leaky' vaccine, at least not to any extent, and smallpox was 'human specific' to the extent that there were no known reservoirs of smallpox in wildlife by which it could remain viable. So the possibility of eradication was real.

Question- what exactly is meant by leaky vaccination with this particular group of vaccines for coronavirus? I had heard the concern early on about vaccine shedding. Is that the same thing? I know the doctors that were concerned about the shedding of the vaccines said watch out for people that have been vaccinated because you might get it from them. There are people that believe the Delta variant is actually the shedding. I don't know if that's true.

So you're saying this virus can get into wildlife which would make it impossible to eradicate?

A 'leaky' vaccine is one which in some cases dampens the symptoms but does not prevent replication or transmission.
And yes there have been cases of the virus in animals.
I'd hesitate to say impossible, but extremely unlikely.