Vaccines alone aren’t enough to eradicate a virus – lessons from history
The glorification of the COVID vaccines follows a well-worn track in its presumption that the arrival of a vaccine heralds the pandemic’s end. Yet in the case of smallpox, our most successful vaccine story to date, this has required the glossing over of centuries of suffering and death and the intense public health struggle to contain the disease. Vaccination did not end smallpox. That was done by a small army of people and organisations working intensively and cooperatively across the globe, inventing and improvising a series of public health measures.