Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

by Jennifer Wright

Whether a civilization fares well during a crisis has a great deal to do with how the ordinary, nonscientist citizen responds.

Today, it’s estimated that smallpox killed around 90 percent of the native people of the Americas.16

Here I would like to say a word or two upon one of the most terrible of all acute infections, the one of which we first learned the control through the work of Jenner. A great deal of literature has been distributed casting discredit upon the value of vaccination in the prevention of small-pox. I do not see how anyone who has gone through epidemics as I have, or who is familiar with the history of the subject, and who has any capacity left for clear judgement, can doubt its value. Some months ago I was twitted by the editor of the Journal of the Anti-Vaccination League for a “curious silence” on this subject. I would like to issue a Mount-Carmel-like challenge to any ten unvaccinated priests of Baal. I will go into the next severe epidemic with ten selected, vaccinated persons and ten selected unvaccinated persons—I should prefer to choose the latter—three members of Parliament, three anti-vaccination doctors (if they can be found), and four anti-vaccination propagandists. And I will make this promise—neither to jeer nor jibe when they catch the disease, but to look after them as brothers, and for the four or five who are certain to die, I will try to arrange the funerals with all the pomp and ceremony of an anti-vaccination demonstration.33 That is the best, snarkiest denouncement of people who do not believe in vaccines I have ever read. I especially like the part where he asks to pick which politicians will die.

Well, Zimbabwe now has a higher immunization rate for one-year-olds against measles (around 95 percent) than the United States does. So do 112 other countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).37 We are down to a 91 percent vaccination rate for measles, which, according to the WHO, makes us much more vulnerable to outbreaks. That is why, for instance, there was an outbreak at Disneyland in 2014. This is very bad news for people in the United States who are especially vulnerable to diseases, including those with compromised immune systems or babies who are too young to be vaccinated.