The only cases of preventable disease that you read about today are in unvaccinated children and adults.

The father of vaccines was Edward Jenner, who in the 1790s created the world’s first vaccine for smallpox.

The vaccination policy of the United States is the subset of U.S. federal law that deals with immunization against preventable diseases. The policy has been developed over two centuries for the purpose of eradicating disease from the U.S. population and creating herd immunity. A strong immunization program is imperative to reduce the burden of vaccine-preventable diseases.

In 1962, the Vaccine Assistance Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy to allow the Centers for Disease Control to support mass immunization campaigns. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced a plan that by the end of the year 2000, at least 90 percent of U.S. children would have completed their basic series of vaccines by the time they reached their second birthday. 

Unlike the resistance to today’s COVID vaccines, in prior years there was a level of trust in the American medical establishment, and people understood the importance and safety of vaccines.

In 1955, after the development of the polio vaccination, the U.S. Congress—via the Polio Assistance Vaccination Act—appropriated funds to purchase and administer vaccines.

A vaccine mandate is a public health requirement that one must be vaccinated against a particular disease to take a specific action covered by the mandate, such as attending school, working, traveling etc.

School mandates began in Boston in 1827, when they mandated children to receive smallpox immunization before entering school. Smallpox killed over 90 percent of the people who contracted it.

In the late 1950s, recommended vaccines were smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and polio. 

From 2011 to the present, measles, mumps, rubella, Hib, hepatitis B, varicella, hepatitis A, pneumococcus, influenza, rotavirus, HPV, shingles, COVID, meningococcus and others have been added.

Just imagine today if the vaccine mandates were abolished and parents had the option of either vaccinating or not vaccinating their children or themselves. Herd immunity would fall, and the disease rate would climb to astronomical levels.

Even for those immunized, the viruses we were protected from could mutate, like COVID, and we would no longer be protected. Case in point, the Type 1 and 2 polioviruses that have mutated in third world countries. Polio survivors all over the world are following this carefully, and so should you.

There are so many horrible diseases today, plenty of disfiguring, painful, paralyzing, ways one can suffer before dying a horrible death. No one should suffer from a disease that is preventable by immunization.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will destroy these mandates. The health of the U.S. population will become a downward roller-coaster ride. Write to your congressional representatives and ask them to decline his nomination. If they accept his nomination, you just might find yourself, or someone you love, on that roller coaster. It might be the last ride on this earth.

Michael Kossove is professor emeritus and adjunct professor of microbiology at Touro University, School of Health Sciences.