“In the early eighteen-seventies, a smallpox pandemic that accompanied the Franco-Prussian War killed more than half a million Europeans.
Smallpox claimed the lives of tens of thousands of French soldiers, yet the Prussians lost fewer than five hundred men. That was because Prussia vaccinated its entire Army against the virus, and France did not.”
This is from a review of Michael Willrich’s Pox: An American History published in the New Yorker.
I have not yet read the book, but on the basis of this review, I am planning to. What is especially interesting to me is how the book seems to give equal amounts of attention to those who were for the vaccine and those who were against it.
I received all my immunizations growing up and then some, given my travels to sub-Saharan Africa. Two of my cousins did not, however, because their other grandfather (who was a medical doctor, if I recall correctly) had convinced my aunt that vaccines were dangerous. Good thing they don’t travel much.
More recently, I was admonished by my colleague Don Taylor last fall when I told him I was not planning on getting a flu shot. He reminded me of the positive externality my getting the shot would create in terms of contributing to herd immunity.