200 million lives saved by a single vaccine strain, and the rise of anti-vaccinations

Most people assume that the anti-vaccination movement is something born of our modern times, where normal for us is everyone not dying of polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, adenovirus, rabies and hepatitis A. “If these people lived in our grandparent’s day,” we tell ourselves, “they wouldn’t think twice about getting vaccinated.” This is probably true but the anti-vaccination movement has been going strong ever since the smallpox vaccination was released. In fact, the recent murmurings of people having their rights impinged if they choose not to get their kids vaccinated isn’t new either. In recent times headlines have been made about a school in Michigan changing its admittance records in 2015 to stop kids who hadn’t been vaccinated to be admitted to the school. In the same year Australia enforced an $11k tax penalty nicknamed ‘no jab, no pay,’ to parents who wouldn’t go through with the vaccinations. This power struggle is...