As soon as the vaccine mandate went into effect, people began to rebel. Some saw it as government overreach -- what right did faraway lawmakers have to tell people what to do with their bodies?

Others worried that the vaccine was dangerous, or that they were being used as guinea pigs -- what proof was there that this concoction even worked? Protests were staged, opinion pieces written, and parents resorted to subterfuge to avoid vaccinating their kids -- they changed addresses to confuse officials, got fake vaccine certificates, and even tried to reverse the process once their kids had already been vaccinated.

This sounds like a tale of the Covid-19 era, with a vocal minority of vaccine opponents staging rallies and filing lawsuits across the United States. But all of the above also happened in 19th-century England, when the government mandated the smallpox vaccine for children. "​​As soon as that mandate is introduced, that's when we get an organized anti-vaccination movement," said Nadja Durbach, a history professor at the University of Utah. "That's when people are like, 'Oh my God, you cannot tell me to do this to my child.'"

The history of smallpox is a reminder that, while they may seem new, anti-vaccination movements are as old as vaccination itself. People's reasons for opposing vaccines -- concerns about side effects, a preference for natural remedies, fear of government overreach -- haven't changed that much either. Our current moment is actually just one more chapter in a story about vaccines and infectious diseases that's been going on for hundreds of years.