Of all the propaganda and misinformation spread by the covidiots the idea that it is somehow unpatriotic to take a vaccine or unconstitutional is the worst. A few weeks back a person that claims to be quite the patriot posted a meme referencing George Washington and what must have been Valley Forge along with a statement of how far we have fallen.
When it was pointed out that George Washington, the commander of American forces during the War of Independence actually ordered his troops to be vaccinated the news was met with howls of indignation and the mouth breather that had posted the erroneous meme came back with "Oh but that was variolation.".
Variola is the name of the virus that causes small pox and while the small pox vaccine wasn't actually created until 1796 the practice of using a weakened form of the virus to inoculate people goes back to around 1000 BCE and had made it to Europe by the middle ages. The British troops were somewhat immune to small pox, having been inoculated or having lived through the disease but not so to the patriot army. Around 90% of the American deaths weren't from battles but from disease with small pox being the most deadly of all diseases at the time.
Washington himself contracted small pox as a young man during a trip to Barbados and was thus immune. Early on in the War of Independence units sent on missions had suffered outbreaks to the point that the missions failed.
Vaccination or variolation was first done around 1720 in the colonies and it wasn't without risk. The Continental Congress had outlawed vaccinating the troops due to the risk but in January of 1777 George Washington ordered Dr. William Shippen Jr. to inoculate all of the continental army that came through Philadelphia. Army encampments were festering with disease and Washington feared small pox more than the British.
This was a calculated risk, should the British learn that their opponents had inoculated the army they would know it was a perfect time to attack a much weakened opponent while the troops were recovering and weak. Around one quarter of the patriot army had survived the disease and had natural immunity so Washington's officers and doctors set about inoculating the other three quarters of the army.
This was an unpopular decision but Washington stuck to his guns and by February of 1777 the inoculation began and eleven hospitals had been built by the end of the year. This wasn't a jab of a vaccine, they scrapped the scabs of recovering small pox patients and transferred a weakened form of the virus to a cut made in the patient's skin. The patient soon became quite sick and needed as much as a month of care to recover. Sometimes they didn't recover as this was a live virus, it was a risky endeavor indeed.
Then, as now, we had a share of religious fanatics that claimed inoculation was "playing God" and several colonies had banned the practice. While the death rate was much lower than a natural infection people did die on occasion. It wasn't until someone figured out that cow pox which was much less deadly would protect against small pox would a successful and fairly safe vaccine be made. Even then, some claimed that the idea had come from a black slave and was some sort of plot to get the white slave owners to kill themselves.
By this time small pox had spread rapaciously throughout the war with the Native Americans and black slaves that had sided with the British carrying the brunt of the fatalities but thanks to Washington's bold action not a single regiment of Continental soldiers was put out of action.
There was no organized resistance despite the general backwardness of the troops that had come from all over the colonies. They grumbled but followed the orders of their officers, were inoculated, recovered, and went on to win at Yorktown by the skin of their teeth and with the help of the French and Spanish defeated the largest army in the world and the only superpower in the world at that time.
There was a small pox pandemic between 1775 and 1782 and around 100,000 colonists died. Washington faced the probability of a small pox outbreak running wild through his army before a crucial battle or the news of an outbreak causing mass desertion or limiting recruitment. The death rate of undergoing inoculation was between one half percent and two percent but the death rate of small pox was between 20 and 30 percent but many victims were scarred for life and some were blinded.
So the next time you hear a covidiot whining about the vaccine being unpatriotic or unconstitutional remind them that with freedom comes responsibility and that we might not have won our independence but for a courageous general and troops that were willing to be responsible and protect themselves and stop the spread of contagion by being vaccinated.
