it is so deeply concerning to see so many, including first responders, refuse to vaccinate and then also refuse to test regularly. i don’t understand this resistance to everything approach.

perhaps it is nefarious, perhaps cynical political gamesmanship, perhaps people who have lived in an alternate timeline, now living in this one. whatever the case. in this timeline, in this reality, vaccine mandates are nothing new. 

as we’ve been reminded, George Washington mandated the smallpox vaccine during the Revolutionary War. he wrote to John Hancock issuing the mandate in February of 1777: “Finding the smallpox to be spreading much and fearing that no precaution can prevent it from running through the whole of our army, I have determined that troops shall be inoculated…This expedient may be attended with some inconveniences and some disadvantages, but yet I trust in its consequences will have the most happy effects. Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the army in the natural way and rage with its virulence we should have more to dread from it than from the sword of the enemy.”

in regards to schools, in 1922 the Supreme Court upheld laws requiring vaccination for entry into public schools. and although we are seeing attacks on iconic children’s tv figures for promoting vaccination, this too is nothing new. Big Bird being attacked? well what took so long, Big Bird has been promoting vaccination for decades and he’s not the only one (see pictures attached along with some other childhood heroes promoting vaccinations decades ago.)

so don’t hate. vaccinate – if you are eligible and able…or agree to regular testing. it isn’t a personal attack on individual rights to end a pandemic that has taken nearly 800,000 lives just in our country alone, and 5 million lives worldwide.

~j

#vaccines #immunization #pandemic #COVID19 #community #empathy