It is time to talk about vaccine hostility. Not just the current anti-vaxxers but where the Anti-Vax Movement actually began. The resistance to vaccinations and the Anti-Vax Movement traces back to religious roots with the Reverend Edmund Massey. In 1772, the Reverend Edmund Massey in England called vaccines “diabolical operations” in his sermon entitled, “The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculations.” Many years later in 2020, the US Roman Catholic Bishops issued formal comments on the moral aspects of various vaccines and their objections were the use of fetal tissue used long ago. Their comments on the Astra Zeneca vaccine included that it was “morally compromised” and “should be avoided.” They later revoked their statement and allowed the vaccine due to the gravity of the Covid virus.
The Anti-Vax Movement is clearly religious based. As of March 2021, only 18% of Americans who consider themselves born-again or evangelical have gotten the vaccine. 40% say that they never will get the vaccine because of its link to abortion. Talk show hosts, news outlets, and politicians have added to the wave of the anti-vax movement in this country. Rand Paul stated that vaccines can cause “mental disorders” and are an “issue of freedom.” Trump has suggested that vaccines are linked to autism but secretly got his jab!
The truth as we see it – if many of us of the older generation looked at our upper arms today, we may still see a round scar from a special technique that pricked our skin with a two-pronged needle when we were children. We got in line, it hurt for a short while, caused a scab to form, and days later fell off leaving a little round scar. This is how the US and the rest of the world stopped a virus that sickened adults and children and killed millions in its early tracks. Smallpox was contagious, disfiguring, and often deadly. Scientists’ and the medical field’s successful development of the smallpox vaccine resulted in the first of its kind to be put into practice against a contagious disease.
Vaccinations are how smallpox became the only human disease to date to be eradicated. The global vaccination program, from 1958 to 1977, took place across the world and, at the time, saved the planet from this deadly virus. The advancement and the implementation of this vaccine program was not debated or questioned or politicized. The vaccine program was so successful in the 1950’s that scientists, 20 years later, declared that smallpox had been eradicated. In 1972, US physicians discontinued the vaccine and smallpox was wiped out worldwide by 1980 which was the result of an unprecedented global immunization campaign. This may conjure up memories of the effects of polio and tetanus. Polio was eliminated in the US with vaccinations and continued use of polio vaccine has kept this country polio free. That little sugar cube in the 1960’s containing polio vaccine wasn’t so bad after all, was it? And the tetanus vaccine saved many a person from lock jaw and death after exposure to contaminated bacteria in the soil.
So, fast forward to today. With the knowledge and history of past viruses, where do current deleterious theories about Covid vaccine like magnets and microchips come from? Who do these falsehoods appeal to? Where does the fear of a “new technology” come from? Look to our leaders who are living in a state of denial as the source from where these arguments abound. The only tools that we have to avoid an everlasting pandemic and unnecessary deaths are the truth and the science. So, should we not, given an opportunity, do our best to educate anyone on the fence about getting the vaccine? Yes, it is an individual’s choice and their right to not take the jab. But their decision may not only affect themselves but their families and co-workers. If someone is on the fence about taking the jab, hopefully they can be prompted to make a healthy decision with a little scientific, not political, awareness. We can only hope that these conversations can extinguish the falsehoods in time. If not, these deniers may pay the ultimate price. In the words of a good friend of ours, you may have to say to the non-vaxxers, “It’s been nice to know you,” because the threatening variances are here and more are right around the corner. Beta and Delta have arrived and Lambda is on the way.
And for more enlightening medical news, as you may have already read, Monkeypox has arrived in Texas. This may be nature’s revenge for the recent Texas voter suppression laws – who knows! It does not help that there are States where politicians continue to politicize Covid. As with Florida which has stayed open for business throughout Covid, 20% of the nation’s new Covid infections are now happening in Florida alone and new cases there are many times the national average. With no mask mandate and the increasing rate of Covid, ICUs in Florida hospitals are filling up once again and, no doubt, deaths will follow. As Covid is rapidly rising, hospitals are preparing for the worse. It does not help that the Governor of Florida is proudly producing merchandise apposing science. His latest t-shirt reads, “Don’t Fauci my Florida” and, in our opinion, is disgusting. There are no words to describe his ignorance.
So, as we move along the continuum of this epidemic, it seems to have no breaks. It is unfortunate that denialism will likely end in the unnecessary deaths of some if not many. And yes, it is their right, to the end…
“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right.” – Peter Marshall
