Meet the vegetarian anti-vaxxers who led the smallpox inoculation backlash in Victorian Britain

[erronis]

1. Thanks for this bit of history. A couple of good sites I follow that deal with these types:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaccine-leader-del-bigtree-on-covid-19-lets-catch-this-cold-why-antivaxxers-and-coronavirus-conspiracy-theorists-are-often-one-in-the-same/

Last week, antivaccine activist Del Bigtree posted a rant denying the severity of COVID-19, blaming the chronically ill for having made themselves vulnerable to severe disease through their lifestyle choices, and urging the young and healthy to “catch this cold”. His rant shows exactly why COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and antivaxxers have such an affinity for each other and have teamed up to resist public health initiatives.
David Gorski on June 22, 2020

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/06/19/becker-and-blaxill-use-covid-19-to-claim-vaccines-cause-sids/

One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed is the affinity between the antivaccine movement and conspiracy theorists who deny the severity of COVID-19 and the necessity of the public health measures instituted to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19). This affinity and alliance between antivaxxers and anti-lockdown protesters and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists who, for example, blame the 5G rollout for COVID-19 came as a surprise to many, but not to those of us who’ve been following the antivaccine movement for a long time. The reason, of course, that the antivaccine movement is based on a conspiracy theory, what I like to refer to as the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, and groups of conspiracy theorists tend to be attracted to each other, and COVID-19 has been a magnet for medical conspiracy theories.