For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
By malcolmfrost
#1887090
I think there may be some rose tinted spectacles here! I have discovered this book about the history of vaccination in the UK. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK545998/
In particular this para is relevant....
The Ministry remained confident in its epidemic control policies, but routine vaccination continued to be problematic. The government had consistently fallen well short of its target of 75 per cent childhood vaccination. In analysing its policy, the Ministry collated vaccination statistics, and they made grim reading for proponents of vaccination (Table 2.2). In 1964, the national average for smallpox in England remained at 32 per cent of children under the age of two. Even the most successful local authority, the city of Worcester in the Midlands, achieved only 61 per cent. This was in stark contrast to the relative successes of the pertussis, diphtheria and poliomyelitis immunisation campaigns, which were approaching childhood vaccination rates of 75 per cent, even in areas where smallpox vaccination was unpopular. The figures also suggested that parents saw smallpox vaccination as an epidemic control tool rather than a necessary immunisation for their children