[JohnBovenmyer]

>Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer.

Pure speculation AND false! Jennerian Vaccination for smallpox came out in the last years of Henry’s life. I don’t know whether history records any of his thoughts on it. But it does record his important action regarding its predecessor, variolation! During the Revolutionary War, at the urging of Gen. Washington, then Gov. Henry repealed the Virginia law against variolation so that Washington could mandatorily Variolate our entire army. This ended our previously severe military problems from smallpox at a 1% fatality cost. The disease had been costing 10-20%. This was a major key to our final independence, using real smallpox virus, not a safer vaccine, but using it in a routine crudely calculated to usually produce a milder case of smallpox. When pushed Patrick Henry acted on the Vaxxer side of the argument. Without his action we might now be fearing King Charles rather than the horde arrayed against Trump.

[so_real]

@JohnBovenmyer, variolation for soldiers was about the same thing as sending your kids to a chicken-pox party. There are almost no similarities between variolation and vaccination outside basic exposure to an antigen. To say Patrick Henry would be pro-vaccination based on variolation is akin to saying all chicken-pox party host mothers are pro-vaccination. And if that is the case, then we are all pro-vaccination ... all we have to do is stretch the word definition to meet your expectations of it. I have little doubt that Patrick Henry would be vehemently apposed to a federal government usurping the citizens rights to administer to their own health without infringement. That would be the common sense position of the day.