¹ “Smallpox,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/clinicians/clinical-disease.html.

² Lanzarotta, Tess and Ramos, Marco A., “Mistrust in Medicine: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Vaccine Institute,” American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 6 (2018): 742–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Soper, George A., “The Curious Case of Typhoid Mary,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 15, no. 10 (1939): 699 Google Scholar.

⁴ “About Typhoid Fever and Paratyphoid Fever,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/typhoid-fever/about/index.html.

⁵ Soper, “The Curious Case of Typhoid Mary,” 708.

⁶ “‘Typhoid Mary’ Must Stay. Court Rejects Her Plea to Quit Riverside Hospital,” The New York Times, July 17, 1909, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1909/07/17/101029416.pdf.

⁷ “Mary Mallon (1869–1938),” WikiTree, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mallon-121.

⁸ Soper, “The Curious Case of Typhoid Mary,” 709–12.

⁹ I thank Ann Barnhill for alerting me to this history. Paul Greenough, “Intimidation, Coercion, and Resistance in the Final Stages of the South Asian Smallpox Eradication Campaign, 1973–1975,” Social Science and Medicine 41, no. 5 (1995): 635–37. The excerpt combines quotations from two different WHO foreign doctors.

¹⁰ Jonathan M. Katz, “U.N. Admits Role in Cholera Epidemic in Haiti,” The New York Times, August 17, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/americas/united-nations-haiti-cholera.html; “About Cholera,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/cholera/index.html.

¹¹ Guillaume, Yodeline et al., “Responding to Cholera in Haiti: Implications for the National Plan to Eliminate Cholera by 2022,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases 218, no. 3 (2018): S167 Google ScholarPubMed.

¹² “Haiti Population,” Worldometer, https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/haiti-population/.

¹³ “Haiti Cholera Outbreak ‘Stopped in Its Tracks’,” UN News, January 24, 2020, https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/01/1056021.

¹⁴ “Haiti Mobs Lynch Voodoo Priests over Cholera Fears,” BBC, December 24, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-12073029; “Haiti Protesters Clash with Police,” Aljazeera, December 6, 2010, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/12/6/haiti-protesters-clash-with-police-2; “UN Blamed for Haiti Shootings,” Aljazeera, updated November 17, 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20101119052326/http:/english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/11/20101117194643939197.html.

¹⁵ “Mobs Lynch ‘Witches’ in Haiti for Spreading Cholera Epidemic,” The Sydney Morning Herald, December 4, 2010, https://www.smh.com.au/world/mobs-lynch-witches-in-haiti-for-spreading-cholera-epidemic-20101203-18jv0.html.

¹⁶ “Haiti Mobs Lynch Voodoo Priests over Cholera Fears.”

¹⁷ COVID-19 Forecasting Team, “Variation in the COVID-19 Infection–Fatality Ratio by Age, Time, and Geography during the Pre-Vaccine Era: A Systematic Analysis,” The Lancet 399, no. 10334 (2022): 1469–88Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Edouard Mathieu et al., “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Deaths,” Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths.

¹⁹ “Although reported COVID-19 deaths between Jan 1, 2020, and Dec 31, 2021, totaled 5.94 million worldwide, we estimate that 18.2 million people died worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic (as measured by excess mortality) over that period.” Haidong Wang et al., “Estimating Excess Mortality Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Analysis of COVID-19-Related Mortality, 2020–21,” The Lancet 399, no. 10334 (2022): 1513–36; “The Pandemic’s True Death Toll,” The Economist, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates.

²⁰ National Center for Health Statistics, “COVID-19 Mortality Overview,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated September 12, 2023, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm; Wang et al., “Estimating Excess Mortality Due to the COIVD-19 Pandemic.”

²¹ Georgina Siklossy, “Police Violence and Racial Profiling during COVID-19 Need to Stop: Governments Must Adopt Measures to Ensure Justice,” European Network Against Racism, May 29, 2020, https://www.enar-eu.org/police-violence-and-racial-profiling-during-COVID-19-need-to-stop-governments/; Emma Ockerman, “‘What Is the Justification for the Rage?’: Viral Video Shows NYPD Cop Punching, Slapping Man During Social Distancing Enforcement,” Vice, May 4, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3zmmw/what-is-the-justification-for-the-rage-viral-video-shows-nypd-cop-punching-slapping-man-during-social-distancing-enforcement; Festival Godwin Boateng, Samuel Ametepey, and Savior Kusi, “Ghana’s COVID Lockdown: Why It Triggered a Toxic Mix of Mass Defiance and Police Violence,” The Conversation, February 2, 2022, https://theconversation.com/ghanas-covid-lockdown-why-it-triggered-a-toxic-mix-of-mass-defiance-and-police-violence-176062; Anders Hagstrom, “Chinese Police Get Violent as COVID-19 Lockdown Protests Sweep the Country,” Fox News, November 27, 2022, https://www.foxnews.com/world/chinese-police-get-violent-COVID-19-lockdown-protests-sweep-country.

²² Rob Iddiols and Jo Shelley, “Violent Clashes Erupt during Anti-Lockdown Demonstrations in Europe,” CNN, November 22, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/21/europe/europe-lockdown-protests-violence-intl/index.html; “Protest against Coronavirus Restrictions Turns Violent in Brussels,” Reuters, December 5, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/protest-against-coronavirus-restrictions-turns-violent-brussels-2021-12-05/; Holly Ellyatt, “Protests against Covid Rules and Lockdowns Erupt across Europe,” CNBC, November 23, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/22/photos-of-anti-covid-protests-in-europe.html; Stephen McDonell, “China Zero Covid: Violent Protests in Guangzhou Put Curbs under Strain,” BBC, November 15, 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63633109.

²³ Lawrence Gostin commenting in “The State of Healthcare Policy: From COVID-19 to Medicare for All,” The Federalist Society, April 16, 2021, YouTube video (3:54–5:44), https://fedsoc.org/events/the-state-of-healthcare-policy-from-COVID-19-to-medicare-for-all.

²⁴ “Research on COVID-19,” updated May 29, 2020, National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, https://sph.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/COVID-19-Science-Report-Diagnostics-1-Jun_updated.pdf.

²⁵ Chad Terhune et al., “Special Report: How Korea Trounced U.S. in Race to Test People for Coronavirus,” Reuters, March 18, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW.

²⁶ Robert P. Baird, “What Went Wrong with Coronavirus Testing in the U.S.,” The New Yorker, March 16, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-went-wrong-with-coronavirus-testing-in-the-us.

²⁷ Sheila Kaplan, “C.D.C. Labs Were Contaminated Delaying Coronavirus Testing, Officials Say,” The New York Times, updated May 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/health/cdc-coronavirus-lab-contamination-testing.html.

²⁸ James Bandler et al., “Inside the Fall of the CDC,” ProPublica, October 15, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc.

²⁹ As reported by Sheri Fink and Mike Baker, “‘It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response,” The New York Times, March 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html: “By Feb. 25, Dr. Chu and her colleagues could not bear to wait any longer. They began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval.”

³⁰ According to a former CDC lab chief, “[a] competent laboratory would not have that problem.” David Willman, “Contamination at CDC Lab Delayed Rollout of Coronavirus Tests,” The Washington Post, April 18, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/contamination-at-cdc-lab-delayed-rollout-of-coronavirus-tests/2020/04/18/fd7d3824-7139-11ea-aa80-c2470c6b2034_story.html.

³¹ Knvul Sheikh, “U.S. Plans ‘Radical Expansion’ of Coronavirus Testing,” The New York Times, updated March 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/fda-coronavirus-testing.html.

³² Food and Drug Administration Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Policy for Coronavirus Disease–2019 Tests (Revised) (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, January 12, 2023), https://www.fda.gov/media/135659/download.

³³ This essay defines violence to mean touching another or using physical barriers to confine another, even if no touching occurs, without consent. Under this definition, an act can inflict no physical harm yet still be violent because it violates another’s person autonomy. This definition is admittedly broad enough to encompass “touching” as innocuous as the electromagnetic radiation or sound waves that all human bodies emit.

³⁴ “George Floyd Protests,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests; Dakin Andone, “In One Week There Were at Least 9 Instances of Police Using Excessive Force Caught on Camera,” CNN, updated June 8, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/police-excessive-force-us-protests/index.html.

³⁵ Kimberly Kindy, Shayna Jacobs, and David A. Fahrenthold, “In Protests against Police Brutality, Videos Capture More Alleged Police Brutality,” The Washington Post, June 5, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/protests-police-brutality-video/2020/06/05/a9e66568-a768-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html; Shawn Hubler and Julie Bosman, “A Crisis That Began With an Image of Police Violence Keeps Providing More,” The New York Times, updated March 11, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/police-violence-george-floyd.html.

³⁶ Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor), “Saving lives in this pandemic is job one,” Twitter, May 7, 2020, 10:17 p.m., https://x.com/NYCMayor/status/1258581714877722630.

³⁷ The federal government lists the failure to pay federal taxes among forms of “significant domestic terrorism.” 26 U.S. Code § 7203; U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism,” May 2021, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/21_0514_strategic-intelligence-assessment-data-domestic-terrorism_0.pdf, 29.

³⁸ Andrew Siff, Jonathan Dienst, and Jennifer Millman, “Grand Jury Declines to Indict NYPD Officer in Eric Garner Chokehold Death,” NBC New York, updated December 4, 2014, https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/grand-jury-decision-eric-garner-staten-island-chokehold-death-nypd/1427980/; Katie Benner, “Eric Garner’s Death Will Not Lead to Federal Charges for N.Y.P.D. Officer,” The New York Times, July 16, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/nyregion/eric-garner-daniel-pantaleo.html.

³⁹ Hayek, Friedrich A., “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” The American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945): 519–30Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, Edwin, vol. 1 (1776; repr., London: Methuen, 1904), IV.2.2, https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-cannan-ed-vol-1 Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Cox Media Group National Content Desk, “Kentucky Woman with Coronavirus Arrested at Kroger After Defying Quarantine for Third Time,” WSB-TV, April 30, 2020, https://www.wsbtv.com/news/trending/kentucky-woman-with-coronavirus-arrested-kroger-after-defying-quarantine-third-time/5MHHEB7HVRBRBC3PTMUK4NUA3Y/.

⁴² Siklossy, “Police Violence and Racial Profiling.”

⁴³ Ashley Southhall, “N.Y.C. Commissioner Denies Racial Bias in Social Distancing Policing,” The New York Times, updated November 5, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/nyregion/nypd-social-distancing-race-coronavirus.html.

⁴⁴ The corresponding figures for whites were 76 percent and 46 percent, respectively. Blendon, Robert J. et al., “Attitudes Toward the Use of Quarantine in a Public Health Emergency in Four Countries,” Health Affairs 25, no. 1 (2006): 19 Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ “QuickFacts New York City, New York,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/newyorkcitynewyork.

⁴⁶ Ashley Southall, “Scrutiny of Social-Distance Policing as 35 of 40 Arrested Are Black,” The New York Times, updated November 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/nyregion/nypd-social-distancing-race-coronavirus.html?login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock&login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock.

⁴⁷ Southall, “Scrutiny of Social-Distance Policing”; Ockerman, “‘What Is the Justification for the Rage?’”

⁴⁸ Tyler Cowen, “Forced Quarantines Are Not the American Way,” Bloomberg, May 13, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-13/forced-quarantines-are-not-the-american-way#xj4y7vzkg.

⁴⁹ Lauren Weber and Joel Achenbach, “Covid Backlash Hobbles Public Health and Future Pandemic Response,” The Washington Post, March 8, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/03/08/covid-public-health-backlash/.

⁵⁰ Anna Maria Barry-Jester, “‘We’re Coming for You’: For Public Health Officials, a Year of Threats and Menace,” Kaiser Health News, April 25, 2021, https://khn.org/news/article/public-health-officials-year-of-threats-menace-santa-cruz-california/.

⁵¹ Greenough, “Intimidation, Coercion, and Resistance,” 636.

⁵² Samuelson, Paul A., “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure,” Review of Economics and Statistics 36, no. 4 (1954): 389 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ Adults routinely consent to disease-transmission risks, such as by visiting crowded areas and engaging in sexual activity. When adults give informed consent, such risks do not violate autonomy.

⁵⁴ The violence is no less real, even if it is inadvertent.

⁵⁵ Childress, James F. et al., “Public Health Ethics: Mapping the Terrain,” The Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics 30, no. 2 (2002): 170–78CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; “COVID-19 and Mandatory Vaccination: Ethical Considerations,” World Health Organization, May 30, 2022, https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1425927/retrieve.

⁵⁶ Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Public Health: Ethical Issues (London: Cambridge Publishers, 2007), 42, https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/assets/pdfs/Public-health-ethical-issues.pdf.

⁵⁷ FY2022 CDC gross outlays: $16.5 billion. FY2022 total federal outlays: $6.3 trillion. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the U.S. Government: Fiscal Year 2024, 152, 488, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/25-1_fy2024.pdf.

⁵⁸ U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the U.S. Government: Fiscal Year 2024, 135.

⁵⁹ Jennifer Kates, Cynthia Cox, and Josh Michaud, “How Much Could COVID-19 Vaccines Cost the U.S. After Commercialization?” Kaiser Family Foundation, March 10, 2023, https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-COVID-19/issue-brief/how-much-could-COVID-19-vaccines-cost-the-u-s-after-commercialization/.

⁶⁰ Kelly Gooch, “Vaccine Mandates Have Hospitals Concerned about Staffing,” Becker’s Hospital Review, September 13, 2021, https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/vaccine-mandates-spur-staffing-worries-at-hospitals.html.

⁶¹ When governments condition services or subsidies on certain behaviors, they introduce no additional physical violence. Such conditions are no different from any other party to a transaction withholding its consent to that transaction. Even when a condition is unpopular, painful, or unconstitutional, government is not employing or threatening physical violence against those to whom the conditions apply. Due in part to the far greater difficulties in measuring nonviolent forms of pressure—i.e., duress—this essay defines and focuses on coercion in the sense of physical force. Note, however, that to the extent a nonviolent condition is so unjust and/or so painful that it would trigger a violent response from civilians, government officials would enter those effects into the balancing test this essay offers.

This position is not unassailable: withholding life-saving medical care feels coercive. Assailants face a challenge, however. If one sweeps into one’s definition of coercion, force, or violence the use of economic consequences to change another’s behavior that do not involve nonconsensual touching or physical barriers, one faces two possibly untenable options. The first is to consider every increase in every price of every good and service and every refusal to bargain to be coercion, force, or violence. (Every price increase threatens economic consequences against consumers who do not give producers more money than before: they no longer get the good or service. Every refusal to deal is an economic consequence that implicitly seeks to get the other party to accept a different price.) The second option is to furnish a rule that tells where noncoercive material incentives end and coercive material incentives begin. Hard cases (“refusing water to a man dying of thirst”) are easier to locate than is a limiting principle. Focusing on nonconsensual touching and physical barriers, as this essay does, avoids such difficulties.

Assailants are not wrong to seek validation of their intuition that threatening to withhold Medicare subsidies from hospitals with unvaccinated workers, which could well lead to loss of life, is coercive. The coercion they seek perhaps lies not in that condition per se, but in the coercive taxes that are so extensive that they make the economic consequences of such conditions so severe; that makes tens of millions dependent on Medicare for medical care.

⁶² Mary Beth Keane, “The History of Quarantine Is the History of Discrimination,” TIME, October 6, 2014, https://time.com/3474945/politics-quarantines-typhoid-mary-ebola/.

⁶³ Lanzarotta and Ramos, “Mistrust in Medicine,” 743.

⁶⁴ Harold Pollack, “Why Public Health Experts Aren’t Reaching Conservatives on Covid,” Politico, August 12, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/12/conservative-public-health-covid-conservative-affirmative-action-503448.

⁶⁵ Keane, “The History of Quarantine.”

⁶⁶ Keane, “The History of Quarantine.”

⁶⁷ Alexandra Marvar, “How New York Separated Immigrant Families in the Smallpox Outbreak of 1901,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 10, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-new-york-separated-immigrant-families-smallpox-outbreak-1901-180971211/.

⁶⁸ “States’ COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Declarations,” National Academy for State Health Policy, updated June 13, 2023, https://nashp.org/states-COVID-19-public-health-emergency-declarations/; Juliette Cubanski et al., “What Happens When COVID-19 Emergency Declarations End? Implications for Coverage, Costs, and Access,” Kaiser Family Foundation, January 31, 2023, www.kff.org/coronavirus-COVID-19/issue-brief/what-happens-when-COVID-19-emergency-declarations-end-implications-for-coverage-costs-and-access/.

⁶⁹ “Democracy … is an obstacle to the suppression of freedom,” though certainly not an insurmountable one. Hayek, Friedrich A., The Road to Serfdom, 50th Anniversary Edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 69–70 Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Aronson, Stanley M., “The Civil Rights of Mary Mallon,” Rhode Island Medical Journal (1995): 74, http://www.rimed.org/rimedicaljournal/2020/05/2020-05-74-heritage-aronson.pdf Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Long, Emily Sweetland, “Mary Mallon and Typhoid Fever,” Fairmount Folio: Journal of History 10 (2008): 39, https://journals.wichita.edu/index.php/ff/article/view/117/124 Google Scholar.

⁷² “The first person to test positive often is assumed to be the source of transmission even though someone else, including the complainant, may have infected that person.” The Center for HIV Law & Policy, HIV Criminalization in the United States: A Sourcebook on State and Federal HIV Criminal Law and Practice (Brooklyn, NY: The Center for HIV Law and Policy, 2022), 1.

⁷³ Shirley Svorny and Michael F. Cannon, “Health Care Workforce Reform: COVID-19 Spotlights Need for Changes to Clinician Licensing,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 899, August 4, 2020, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/health-care-workforce-reform-covid-19-spotlights-need-changes-clinician-licensing.

⁷⁴ Matthew D. Mitchell, Thomas Stratmann, and James Bailey, “Raising the Bar: ICU Beds and Certificates of Need,” Mercatus Center policy brief, April 29, 2020, https://www.mercatus.org/research/policy-briefs/raising-bar-icu-beds-and-certificates-need.

⁷⁵ Maani, Nason and Galea, Sandro, “COVID-19 and Underinvestment in the Public Health Infrastructure of the United States,” The Milbank Quarterly 98, no. 2 (2020): 239–49Google ScholarPubMed.

⁷⁶ Sarah Kliff, “The Incredible Shrinking Prevention Fund,” The Washington Post, April 19, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/19/the-incredible-shrinking-prevention-fund/.

⁷⁷ Jeffrey A. Singer and Michael F. Cannon, “Drug Reformation: End Government’s Power to Require Prescriptions,” Cato Institute, October 20, 2020, https://www.cato.org/white-paper/drug-reformation-end-governments-power-require-prescriptions.

⁷⁸ Paul Fronstin and Stephen A. Woodbury, “Update: How Many Americans Have Lost Jobs with Employer Health Coverage during the Pandemic?” The Commonwealth Fund, January 11, 2021, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2021/update-how-many-americans-have-lost-jobs-employer-health-coverage-during-pandemic; Michael F. Cannon, “End the Tax Exclusion for Employer‐Sponsored Health Insurance: Return $1 Trillion to the Workers Who Earned It,” Policy Analysis no. 928, Cato Institute, May 24, 2022, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/end-tax-exclusion-employer-sponsored-health-insurance-return-1-trillion-workers-who.

⁷⁹ Sarah Kliff, “Why the Sickest Workers May Be among the First Back on the Job,” New York Times, June 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/upshot/coronavirus-health-insurance-sickest-workers-return.html.

⁸⁰ Cannon, Michael F. and Pohida, Jacqueline, “Would ‘Medicare for All’ Mean Quality for All? How Public‐Option Principles Could Reverse Medicare’s Negative Impact on Quality,” Quinnipiac Health Law Journal 25, no. 2 (2022): 181–258, https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2022-04/cannon-qhlj-v25n2.pdf Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Stephen A. Moses, “Aging America’s Achilles’ Heel: Medicaid Long-Term Care,” Cato Institute, Policy Analysis no. 549, September 1, 2005, https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/aging-americas-achilles-heel-medicaid-long-term-care.

⁸² Steve Burrows, “We Deserve to Know Infection Rates,” Morning Consult, September 11, 2020, https://morningconsult.com/opinions/we-deserve-to-know-infection-rates/.

⁸³ Maani and Galea, “COVID-19 and Underinvestment.”

⁸⁴ Iddiols and Shelley, “Violent Clashes Erupt”; “Protest against Coronavirus Restrictions”; Ellyatt, “Protests against Covid Rules”; McDonell, “China Zero Covid.”

⁸⁵ Steven Charles Buckingham, Saints, “Savages,” and Smallpox: Epidemic Disease and the Colonization of New England, 1616–1637 (master’s thesis, University of Memphis, 2012), 65, https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1530&context=etd.

⁸⁶ Semba, Richard D., “The Ocular Complications of Smallpox and Smallpox Immunization,” Journal of the American Medical Association Ophthalmology 121, no. 5 (2003): 715–19Google ScholarPubMed.

⁸⁷ Henderson, Donald A., “The Eradication of Smallpox: An Overview of the Past, Present, and Future,” Vaccine 295 (2011): D7–D9, https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/60089b563e769ee6263ec4ba/60809179d325cb2b6196eb2a_SMALLPOX%20REVIEW1-s2.0-S0264410X11009546-main.pdf Google Scholar.

⁸⁸ Emphasis added. Nelson, Ann Marie, “The Cost of Disease Eradication: Smallpox and Bovine Tuberculosis,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 894, no. 1 (1999): 85 Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously said in a dissenting opinion: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” Compania General de Tobacos v. Collector, 275 U.S. 100 (1927). See also, Pomeroy, John, Ranney, Waitstill, and Redfield, Timothy, “Report of the Committee Appointed by the Governor to Take into Consideration the Financial Affairs of the State,” in Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Vermont, October Session (Burlington, VT: Chauncey Goodrich, 1851), 368–69Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Monica Rimmer, “How Smallpox Claimed Its Final Victim,” BBC News, August 9, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-45101091.

⁹¹ Greenough, “Intimidation, Coercion, and Resistance,” 643.

⁹² Long, “Mary Mallon and Typhoid Fever,” 38.

⁹³ Long, “Mary Mallon and Typhoid Fever,” 39.

⁹⁴ Long, “Mary Mallon and Typhoid Fever,” 44.

⁹⁵ Aronson, “The Civil Rights of Mary Mallon,” 74–75.

⁹⁶ Watson, Oliver J. et al., “Global Impact of the First Year of COVID-19 Vaccination: A Mathematical Modelling Study,” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 22, no. 9 (2022): 1293–1302, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext Google ScholarPubMed.

⁹⁷ Meagan C. Fitzpatrick et al., “Two Years of U.S. COVID-19 Vaccines Have Prevented Millions of Hospitalizations and Deaths,” The Commonwealth Fund, December 13, 2022, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations.

⁹⁸ Kates, Cox, and Michaud, “How Much Could COVID-19 Vaccines Cost the U.S. After Commercialization?”

⁹⁹ Jon Cohen, “The United States Badly Bungled Coronavirus Testing—but Things May Soon Improve,” Science, February 28, 2020, https://www.science.org/content/article/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve.

¹⁰⁰ Dyer, Owen, “COVID-19: U.S. Doctors Sue Regulator for Charging Them with Spreading Misinformation in Pandemic,” British Medical Journal 382 (2023): https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/382/bmj.p1991.full.pdf Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Weber and Achenbach, “Covid Backlash Hobbles Public Health.”