Big lessons from smallpox
Recently I walked into Glen Eden’s bookshop-cafe for my morning coffee and noticed a pile of magazines near the door. “A man just left them,” the café’s manager explained. “We didn’t want them, but he left them anyway.” The magazine had unflattering images of Bill Gates and Jacinda Ardern, and headlines like “The Covid-19 Vaccine Catastrophe” and “Your Government is Lying to You”. Thousands of copies were being distributed across Auckland by anti-vaccination activists, or antivaxxers.
Today the world is full of anti-vaxxers. A survey found that about a third of Americans say they will refuse vaccination against Covid-19. A study by the University of Auckland’s School of Population Health discovered that 20 per cent of Kiwis are also against getting vaccinated.
Anti-vaxxers are often considered a 21st-century
