But you haven’t answered my question. In the name of public safety, why didn’t the original gov’t force everyone to be vaccinated? Of course the men in the military were more susceptible because of close quarters, but there were still outbreaks in the cities and many deaths could have been prevented.
George Washington certainly didn't control all the cities to enforce such even if he wished and was rather too busy with other priorities to try enforcing that where he could. The evidence for variolation was both new and empirical and science as a driver of medicine was also quite new. The better option of vaccination was 30 years away and fought then because its seeming oddity. IIRC the first important use of medical statistics was Lind proving something in lemon juice prevented Scurvy c. 1760. Microscopic organisms as a mechanism of disease were only proven for one problem, a Dermatologic one. The scabies mite had been identified. Bacteria and viruses were well in the future. Any theory as to how vaccination might work was further off. The science couldn't show how someone not receiving variolation might harm their neighbor, but empirically it could show that not treating a soldier would make him less likely to remain fit to fight and thus hurt the army. Ever an adequate kind of excuse to an army.
Wiki reports mandatory vaccination first appeared in the US in 1850 in MA when they instituted mandatory public education (a better target for Freeper ire.) The argument used was concern that concentrating the children would encourage outbreaks of disease. It took quite awhile for the practice to become widespread as laws and longer for people to comply with them. Gradually the science became compelling and nearly everyone accepted vaccination as common sense. That didn't change significantly IMHO until two things happened. One was liberals overgrew government to the point that a significant population reflexively distrusted everything government said. Second was the intentional fraud (in hindsight paid for by trial shysters trying to drum up business) done to the science itself with the false claim that MMR caused autism. Even after it was refuted the fact a well respected science journal had lied and subsequent ongoing evidence of liberal driven scientific fraud on many other fronts, weakened the faith in science that had been widespread up through the Apollo program. Liberalism broke that. It needs to be removed and good science put back instead. Then we won't have enough folks wanting to opt out to interfere with the overall results.
If someone knows that I can post the former, let me know and I'll do so once I've reformatted it for FR.