I was honored to be invited by the Glenview Public Library in Glenview, Illinois, to give a talk on the history of vaccines. I talked for about an hour on the development of vaccines, with some interesting questions at the end. It was a timely topic to cover, given all the questions about the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out.
What we are about to experience as a nation — and the world — is going to be one of the biggest public health interventions in history, perhaps only comparable to the effort to eradicate smallpox.
“Wisecrack” is an educational channel on YouTube that looks at current, popular culture issues through a lens of history, philosophy and science, with a little humor thrown in. In the episode below, they analyze the causes of anti-mask behavior and put that behavior in historical context to two other instances of public health emergencies: the Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Both of those emergencies required public education and enforcement of public health laws. Guess which one — education or enforcement — seems to work better?
Dr. Albert Sabin, creator of the oral polio vaccine, delivered a lecture at Johns Hopkins University on January 21, 1988. He spoke on how the international community must come together to control diseases and conditions around the world. The lecture runs about an hour and 25 minutes. He begins his lecture at 5 minutes and 50 seconds into the video.
Because vaccine policy is political in nature, different states in the United States are dealing with bill debates differently.