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  • 2021-08-06 (xsd:date)
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  • Did George Washington Order Troops To Get Vaccinated Against Smallpox? (en)
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  • In the summer of 2021, as major companies such as Google, Microsoft, and United Airlines started to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for employees, and as the Biden administration was mulling an announcement that it would mandate vaccines for the U.S. Military, a historical anecdote from 1777 started to circulate on social media: Supposedly, General (and later President) George Washington ordered troops to get vaccinated against smallpox during the Revolutionary War. This is generally accurate. It would be more precise to say that Washington ordered inoculations, not vaccinations, as the smallpox vaccine had not yet been developed. As vaccinations are a form of inoculation, and as these words are often interchangeable, we've marked this as mostly true. As Washington and the Continental Army battled the British for America's independence during the Revolutionary War, the soldiers faced an even deadlier foe in the form of smallpox. Washington saw the effects of this disease firsthand during his siege of Boston in 1775. An article on the Mount Vernon website reads: While Washington was cautious and attempted to protect his soldiers from smallpox by ordering quarantines and other measures, he was hesitant to order his troops to get inoculations. Washington was worried that the temporary incapacitation of his soldiers —inoculations at the time basically infected recipients with a weak case of smallpox, which caused some sickness even as it allowed them to build up immunity to the disease — would leave the army vulnerable to attack. By early 1777, however, Washington realized that he could have troops inoculated as soon as they enlisted. That way, by the time they were outfitted and ready to join him on the battlefield, their symptoms would have subsided. Mount Vernon writes: On Jan. 6, 1777, Washington wrote a letter to Dr. William Shippen Jr., the Director General of Hospitals of the Continental Army, ordering troops to be inoculated. It's available here via the National Archives. Elizabeth Fenn, a professor of early American history at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, told History.com that inoculations in the 1770s were far different than vaccinations today. The COVID-19 vaccine, for example, is administered via a simple injection (or two). Inoculations in the 1770s were done with a method called variolation which involved cutting into the flesh and implanting a pustule into the wound. History.com writes: Variolation wasn't perfect, but the case-fatality rate associated with variolation was 10 times lower than that associated with naturally occurring smallpox, according to 2005 paper published in the medical journal Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings. In 2016, a paper published in Science Direct reported that variolation resulted in a milder form of the disease with a much lower fatality rate (2–3%), compared to natural smallpox infection. According to the National Institutes of Health, the post-variolation rate was even lower: 1-2%. While Washington certainly ordered mass immunizations to protect his troops from smallpox, the above-displayed meme states that Washington ordered vaccinations, and that isn't completely accurate. Edward Jenner didn't create the first vaccine until several years after the Revolutionary War, in 1796. You can read more about Jenner and see an incredible photo of two children, one vaccinated and one unvaccinated, in a previous Snopes article. (en)
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