When Anti-Vaccine Protests Haven’t Work Out So Well
Do you remember what happened in Leicester?
Anti-vaccine protests have no real chance of working out.
And that is simply because even when they actually work, and fewer people get vaccinated, they are still doomed to fail.
Why?
With fewer people vaccinated and protected, vaccine preventable diseases eventually come back, and some folks get sick and die and many more end up getting vaccinated again.
When Anti-Vaccine Protests Haven’t Work Out So Well
Don’t believe me?
Let’s take a little stroll down memory lane…
Remember Leicester, England?
The name comes up a lot in anti-vaccine circles because they think it supports their idea that smallpox went away without vaccines.
Of course, it doesn’t.
While an 1885 protest in Leicester worked to drop the vaccination rates in the town, it also had another expected effect.
That’s right, the return of smallpox!
Smallpox returned with a drop in vaccination rates with the founding of the Anti-Vaccination League in 1869 and again, after the Anti-Vaccination League protests of 1885.
And in each case, it took folks getting vaccinated and protected to stop the outbreaks.
The Polio Vaccine Boycott in Nigeria
Need a more recent example?
In 2003, political and religious leaders in three states in northern Nigeria boycotted the polio immunization campaign.
“In northern Nigeria in 2003, the political and religious leaders of Kano, Zamfara, and Kaduna states brought the immunization campaign to a halt by calling on parents not to allow their children to be immunized. These leaders argued that the vaccine could be contaminated with anti-fertility agents (estradiol hormone), HIV, and cancerous agents.”
What Led to the Nigerian Boycott of the Polio Vaccination Campaign?
And what was the effect of the boycott?
“As a result, over 1,500 children were paralyzed.”
What Led to the Nigerian Boycott of the Polio Vaccination Campaign?
More polio, including cases that spread to many other countries, at least until polio vaccination resumed the next year.
Other Failed Anti-Vaccine Protests
Other examples of failed anti-vaccine protests that resulted in an increase in vaccine preventable diseases include:
the worsening of a smallpox epidemic following the Montréal Vaccine Riot in 1885
the large 1895-96 smallpox epidemic in Gloucester County, UK following the demonstrations the previous few years
the worsening of a smallpox epidemic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin following the Smallpox Riots of 1894
the worsening of a smallpox epidemic in Boston, Massachusetts in 1901
the 1904 Vaccination Revolt in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil that led to a smallpox epidemic in 1908
the 2012 Taliban ban on polio vaccination led to a major surge in polio cases a few years later
It has never failed.
Anti-vaccination protests were followed by drops in vaccination rates and then soon followed by epidemics of vaccine preventable disease.
Which led to everyone getting vaccinated to control the outbreaks and epidemics.
Unfortunately, once the epidemics are brought under control, the anti-vaccine movement once again gains steam and is able to get people to listen to their misinformation again and scare them away from getting vaccinated.
The cycle starts again.