As you read what happened 135 years ago, youâre going to be absolutely stunned by the similarities with what is happening today.
Back then, vaccination made things worse so they doubled down on the intervention and required it for people. The result: even worse results. Nobody ever figured out the more you vaccinate, the worse things got:
By the end of 1868, more than 95 percent of the inhabitants of Chicago had been vaccinated. After the Great Fire of 1871 (it leveled the city), strict vaccine laws were passed, and vaccination was made a condition of receiving relief supplies. Chicago was then hit with a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1872 where over 2000 persons contracted smallpox, with over 25% dying, and the fatality rate among children under 5 being the highest ever recorded.
Tensions reached a boiling point and on March 23, 1885, a large protest estimated at 80,000 to 100,000 people erupted. It was composed of citizens of all professions from across England and received support from citizens across Europe who could not attend it. The procession was two miles long, with displays showing the popular sentiments against vaccination present throughout the crowd. The demonstration was successful, and the local government acceded to and acknowledged their demands for liberty.
The manufacturing town of Leicester was subject to Englandâs 1840 law requiring immunization, and the 1859 law requiring every child to be vaccinated within 3 months of birth.
And I think this will sound very familiar as well; this may be where we are headed:
Assaults on officers enforcing vaccination occurred, and riots periodically broke out. This quote 1874 quote from Emeritus Professor F. W. Newman encapsulates the mood of the time: âDecorous and admissible language fails me, in alluding to that which might have seemed incredible thirty years agoâthe commanding of vaccination on a second child of a family, when vaccination has killed the first; and then sending the father to prison for refusal.
Here are the interventions that finally solved the problem.
That year, following the protest, the government was replaced, mandates were terminated, and by 1887 vaccination coverage rates had dropped to 10%. To replace the vaccination model, the Leicester activists proposed a system of immediately quarantining smallpox patients, disinfection of their homes and quarantining of their contacts alongside improving public sanitation.
The medical community vehemently rejected this model, and zealously predicted Leicesterâs âgigantic experimentâ would soon result in a terrible âmassacre,â especially in the unprotected children, who were viewed by government physicians as âbags of gunpowderâ that could easily blow-up schools (along with much other hateful and hyperbolic rhetoric directed at them). This smallpox apocalypse would forever serve as a lesson against vaccine refusal the medical profession bet their stake upon.
As the predicted catastrophe failed to emerge, Leicester had dramatically lower rates of smallpox in subsequent epidemics than other fully vaccinated towns (ranging from 1/2 to 1/32). Various rationalizations were put forward to explain this, but as the decades went by, a gradual public acceptance of Leicesterâs methods emerged, but even 30 years later, a New York Times article still predicted a disaster was right around the corner and it was imperative Leicester change their methods. Fortunately, the value of Leicesterâs novel approach of quarantining and improving public hygiene was recognized and gradually adopted around the world, leading to the eventual eradication of smallpox.
Source excerpts
Senator Panâs bill in California to eliminate the opt-out ability of people is coming. This is tyranny.
