Input | Output |
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Link | YouTube |
Published | 2021/03/10 |
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Status | article incomplete |
Beau says:
Beau dives into how Washington's proactive public health measures debunk the notion of founders prioritizing freedom over science in today's context.
History enthusiasts, public health advocates.
The full transcript provides a detailed historical perspective on how Washington's proactive public health measures challenge the notion of founders prioritizing freedom over science.
#PublicHealth #FoundingFathers #Inoculation #Lockdowns #VaccineDrives
Well, howdy there, internet people.
It's Beau again.
So today, we're gonna kind of dive into something.
All across this country right now,
you have governors removing mandates.
And as they remove them, they rail and rant about freedom.
And in the process, they end up evoking
the image of the founders and that fight for freedom.
So it kind of leads us to wonder,
how would the founders have responded to this situation?
What would Washington have done
if he had to deal with lockdowns and quarantines
and essential workers, stuff like that?
How would he have reacted?
Well, I mean, he wouldn't have reacted
because he's the one who ordered it.
Washington embraced science
more so than most of his contemporaries.
In Boston, as an example, there was smallpox,
and Washington had had that in Barbados.
He knew how devastating it could be to an army.
So he locked down Boston, told civilians,
kind of, you don't have to go home,
but you can't stay here.
They couldn't come into the military zone.
He ordered strict quarantines of his troops.
When his troops had to go into Boston
or the surrounding areas,
only those who had already had it
and only those that had a real reason to go could go.
You might call them essential workers.
But he had a lot of the same problems
that those who embrace science do today.
Had a bunch of close-minded, uninformed politicians
at the local and in Congress
standing in his way.
They didn't have real vaccines at the time,
not the way we think of them today,
but they did have forms of inoculation.
Congress banned it.
Couldn't do it, it was too risky.
Now, Washington, he knew that in some ways that was true
because it did kind of put troops
out of commission for a while.
So he held off on it as long as he could.
But once it got to the point where it was deemed necessary,
he just went ahead and did it.
Told Congress that they could figure it out later, I guess.
Better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
He inoculated his troops.
And the effects were so pronounced
that Congress repealed the ban.
And then average citizens could do it.
This idea of evoking the founders
and that cry of freedom when it comes to public health,
it's just historically inaccurate.
In fact, we all talk about Valley Forge.
One of the reasons it was so bad
was that a large number of troops
got their inoculation during that period.
It wasn't like a shot of today.
It was done in a much more crude manner.
But this whole idea, this whole concept
that somehow the men who fought in the Revolution
would disregard science and best evidence simply
because of some vague notion, it's just completely inaccurate.
If Washington was in charge today,
we probably would have had massive lockdowns.
We definitely would have had mask mandates.
We would probably have, let's just say, large vaccine drives.
Because Washington's action in ordering his troops inoculated
against the wishes of Congress, that
wound up being the first major public health
initiative in the United States.
So perhaps if you want to draw a parallel to the Revolution,
maybe you should draw a parallel to the people who were wrong.
Anyway, it's just a thought.
Y'all have a good day.
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