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“After all, that was a strategy we used with the American Indian.”

The Brits did that.

Ah yes, another fine liberal fable. Very, very tenuously tied to one letter from one British colonel at one fort in the Northwest Territories after years of Indian war parties killing many of his soldiers and civilians.

Yes, he DID recommend selling infected blankets to the local Indians. There is no compelling evidence his idea was ever actually acted upon by the national, regional or local trading post - who did, after all is said and done, rely on those very same Indian tribes who would be killed by the blankets for ITS market of trade goods and as fur trappers!

Further, the small pox can be accurately traced north from Mexico City and the Mexican coast (east and west) up with the horse trade inland to the Hudson Bay, west coast as far as Seattle and Alaska, and up and inland from the east coast many hundred years BEFORE the “infected blanket” tale was ever expressed in that letter.

Did smallpox and influenza killed many hundreds of thousands, perhaps 80% of some villages and tribes?
Absolutely.
Was it spread deliberately? No.
Not until the Revolutionary War by vaccinating the British and colonial soldiers - in the American and Canadian camps and cities near American population centers! And those early vaccines DID “incidentally” kill and sicken many of the soldiers who were vacinated.