The more things change, the more they stay the same. While that old saying may not seem very appropriate during a pandemic when everything seems different, human nature does appear to be very much the same.
As I write this, everyone is very tired of living through a pandemic. Passions are running high, and everyone, regardless of their position, is claiming the moral high ground. Protests are fuelling protests, blockades are stopping businesses that are finally allowed to open, the City of Ottawa has even declared a state of emergency.
Ottawa police estimate there were between 5,000 and 18,000 protesters downtown on the first  weekend of the protest, meanwhile during the first week of the protest, 323,239 people in Canada were vaccinated. In total, as of today, 30,373,364 Canadians have been vaccinated, (https://covid19tracker.ca/vaccinationtracker.html). If you compare those two numbers, the number of protesters is less than half a percent of the people who have said yes to the vaccine. Should that number of people be allowed to define “freedom” for all?
Have we as a society decided that “freedom” means you are allowed to bully innocent people because you have a big truck? Or give you permission to disrespect the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or make Terry Fox into someone he never was? Does “freedom” mean you have permission to target exhausted health care workers? It is difficult, in these dark winter days, not to feel some discouragement about all of that.
Pandemics are not new. I came across an interesting news story in between all the coverage of the protest. Some people who were working on demolishing a church in New Brunswick found part of an old newspaper from 1885. “The clipping details a push to get Montreal school children vaccinated against smallpox at a time when vaccine mandates were sparking violent riots, despite the disease killing thousands in Quebec.” In spite of the fact that the  smallpox outbreak in Montreal killed 3,259 people in the city alone, the mandate made by the Board of Health led to a “howling mob” surrounding and destroying the East End Branch Health Office’s building. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/newspaper-smallpox-1885-vaccine-1.6335345
John Geddes writes about the same event in Maclean’s magazine. It is interesting to note that the city, divided by French and English, was also divided in their acceptance of the vaccine. The largely English-speaking west end of the city rushed to get the vaccine, which had been discovered 90 years before by Edward Jenner, who published work about vaccinating against smallpox in England. The French-Canadians in the east end resisted and “suffered 90 per cent of the deaths, overwhelmingly among children under 10.” Then, as now, the media played a role in this divide. “The French press, unconvinced that smallpox was serious, poured scorn on sensation-seeking English papers.” Sound familiar? https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/when-the-plague-won-a-history-of-vaccine-hesitancy.
People in the early 1800s had some room for fear of vaccines – the concept being very new at the time.
The History of Vaccines provides WHO-verified information about vaccines through the ages. In England, Edward Jenner used cowpox to show that he could protect a child from smallpox if he scratched the child and infected the child with lymph from a cowpox blister. People at the time protested - using sanitary, religious, scientific, and political reasons.
“Some objectors, including the local clergy, believed that the vaccine was ‘unchristian’ because it came from an animal. For other anti-vaccinators, their discontent with the smallpox vaccine reflected their general distrust in medicine and in Jenner’s ideas about disease and disease spread.” 
“Lastly, many people objected to vaccination because they believed it violated their personal liberty, a tension that worsened as the government developed mandatory vaccine policies.”
Two Vaccination Acts, one issued in 1853 and a second issued in 1867 made it mandatory to vaccinate children under the age of 14, with penalties imposed for those who refused. “The laws were met with immediate resistance from citizens who demanded the right to control their bodies and those of their children,” https://www.historyof vaccines.org/index.php/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination- movements.
The anti-vaccination movement was alive and well in the United States as well, almost 100 years later. In 1902, Cambridge, Massachusetts board of health ordered all city residents be vaccinated against smallpox. Henning Jacobson refused and his battle went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the Court found in 1905 in the state’s favour, ruling “that the state could enact compulsory laws to protect the public in the event of a communicable disease. This was the first U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the power of states in public health law.”
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/articles/history-anti-vaccination-movements.
So here we are – 200 years from the time someone first scratched a kid and infected them on purpose in order to save their life. Our vaccines, the testing, and the resources spent on developing them have changed in ways we can’t even imagine. But as people, we are still the same. A certain percentage of us will accept the science behind the vaccines while a certain percentage will resist – believing that personal freedom trumps whatever measure is being imposed by a higher power. Religion, media, and politics still play a role in guiding the direction of these discussions.
But there is reason for optimism. We no longer fear smallpox in spite of those who demanded the right to choose to let their children die from it. Jenner’s vision was finally realized when smallpox was considered wiped out worldwide in 1980 because of an unprecedented immunization campaign (mayoclinic.org). Its eradication is considered to be the biggest achievement in international public health (cdc.gov). For some reason, we still have nurses, doctors, and caregivers, both paid and unpaid,who keep turning up and caring for all – regardless of the patient’s beliefs or public opinion. People of all descriptions are showing up and doing their jobs, in spite of the complications Covid brings – truckers,farmers, retail workers, janitors, teachers, restaurant servers, police officers, builders, plumbers, electricians, all the folks delivering our every desire ... the list is endless. It works – the supply chain works, our communities work, our education and health systems work, when everyone pulls together.
Everyone is tired of living in a pandemic. Thankfully, bringing an end to it will come from doing what the majority of people are doing: following health protocols, caring for their neighbours, and getting vaccinated. ◊