S1E64 / The Origins of Vaccine Hesitancy / Jonathan Berman, Nadja Durbach and Michael Willrich

EPIDEMIC with Dr. Celine Gounder

"Every generation has generated its own anti-vaccinationism based on very similar concerns." -Jonathan Berman

Vaccines are a safe and critical public health tool. They prevent crippling childhood diseases like polio. They’re responsible for the eradication of one of the deadliest diseases ever — smallpox — and, today, they’re one of the most important measures we have to end the coronavirus pandemic. But despite these achievements people have been worried about vaccines for as long as they’ve existed and this anxiety is a serious challenge to reaching herd immunity. In this episode of EPIDEMIC, we look back to the 1800s to learn from the mistakes of the first mass vaccination campaigns in the United Kingdom and the United States.

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