The Other Pandemic: Erosion of public trust, Misinformation and Vaccine hesitancy

Vaccination and opposition to it is nothing new.

Variolation, infecting someone with material from smallpox pustules to create natural immunity, was practiced in Asia and Africa in the 16th century. Cotton Mather, a Christian minister in Boston promoted the practice in the 1700’s having learnt the technique from his African slave. Despite its effectiveness, Mather was ostracized.

The smallpox vaccination of the late 18th century promoted by Edward Jenner, an English physician, used cowpox. Although successful at preventing smallpox, one of the most feared illnesses with a death rate of 30%, anti-vaxxers of the day called it a foreign assault on traditional order.

In 1910, Sir William Osler, the father of modern medicine, famously expressed his dismay at the irrationality of the anti-vaccinationists by offering to take 10 vaccinated and 10 unvaccinated people into the next smallpox epidemic. The vaccinated group, he said, could care for the unvaccinated when they inevitably succumbed to the disease and arrange for the funerals of those who died.

The death toll for smallpox is estimated at 300 million in the 20th century alone. In 1979, smallpox became the first human infectious disease to be eradicated by vaccination.