12,000 years
That's how long Smallpox had been around, decimating whole civilizations and even wiping out others completely...the fall of the Roman empire was partly due to Smallpox
For years, this disease kept popping up and killing millions without a cure in sight
But it was until the 6th century that the disease really started making mad moves when it landed in Europe which was becoming a highly populated continent. That was when smallpox started doing big league numbers
This was later spread to other continents like Africa, Asia and the Americas, taken there by European traders and religious missionaries who wanted to spread the gospel to the "savages" who were doing very okay
We have all read, or at least some of us, about how smallpox was the major reason why conquering North America was easy, the white missionaries gave out blankets deliberately infected with smallpox to the native Indians and the disease took out 90% of indigenous people
At that point, the scientists who were dealing with the mysteries of the disease started piecing clues together...one of the first things they noted was that, most of the people that survived the disease, although left badly scarred, never contracted it again.
And what was the Church and the people of the most high doing? What they usually do in disasters
They kept telling their people to pray, that Smallpox was a punishment for sinners and that people who were ckean before god would never catch it...just sinners only
This misinformation led to the deaths of millions of devout Christians. Rather tham urge their believers to take precautions recommended by scientists, they chose to other route...the same thing would later be repeated with HIV AIDS many years later
And in all of this, in between trying to pray away the smallpox pandemic and fighting scientific findings on the disease so far, it was one man who decided to take matters into his hands based on nothing other than a scientific hunch...not prayers
Benjamin Jesty was a simple farmer in Dorset in England. As the Smallpox ravaged through England, Benjamin noticed something...he noted that milkmaids who contracted Cowpox due to constant contact with cows were immune to getting Smallpox
Do you know what this man did?
He intentionally infected his wife and two sons with Cowpox. He took his family to a cow at a farm in nearby Chetnole that had the disease, and using a darning needle, transferred pustular material from the cow by scratching their arms.
The experiment almost turned tragic for his wife but they all recovered. This risky experiment formed the basis for inoculation and it would be used 20 years later by Edward Jenner and eventually smallpox deaths started going down.
Once it was confirmed that the Smallpox vaccine worked, governments around the world started making the vaccine mandatory...guess who started fighting that directive and the vaccine?
Yeah, you guessed right...
They couldn't just allow a vaccine interfere with divine punishment
And just like the Church would later stand against the use of condoms to stop the spread of HIV, these people started campaigning against the vaccine...same way they are doing right now in some parts with the COVID-19...
I keep saying religion and small brains...
Despite all that, vaccination did take place and as of 2020, the last person on record to naturally contract smallpox was a Somali hospital worker in 1977.
And guess who changed their stand and started giving praise to the most high for helping 'eradicate' smallpox?
Yeah
So, whatever you see happening with COVID-19 vaccines, all the conspiracies and the nonsense being spewed by some religious people, just know it is normal. They've been doing that for thousands of years and because reading ain't their strong suit, history keeps repeating itself.
