You’re kidding, right? You don’t think those colonists wouldn’t have given their eyeteeth to have had just a few of the vaccines available today instead of losing children soon after birth from those diseases today’s vaccines prevent?
We’ve become very spoiled in our expectation that under ordinary circumstances all our children will grow into adulthood. Our parents/grandparents’ generation and beyond had no such expectation. How’d you like to have to bury your two year old who died of flu, as so many did a lot more recently than the AmRev?
Within the last century alone, it’d be interesting to note how many died, say in 1918, from the flu. Or how many lives were destroyed by polio. I remember standing in line at the local public school soon after Dr. Salk came out with his vaccine. No one, but no one, at least that I knew of, refused the Salk vaccine, even if there were some yet to be determined nasty side effects.
How many colonists and folks in the 1900's could've been saved if common fever-reducers were available then that are readily available today? Hygiene issues that existed back then that no longer exist today? You are willing to give all the credit to vaccinations?
Firearm rights activists often point to the number of doctor/hospital medical mistakes which lead to death (what, 100,000+ a year?); those numbers and credibility issues just disappear in the vaccine argument?
Medical science has done wonderful and amazing things, but it's not infalliable. People have to make judgment calls, for themselves and their families. The women who received the flu vaccine in the Philippines that was secretly laced with birth control (in a predominantly Catholic country where that is an anathema to their religious beliefs) by the WHO (and I think Bayer was the manufacturer, but fact check me on that). Does that not give one pause in the trust zone?
Just a few thoughts on a tough issue.
Finally, remember that Freedom is risky.