MAVA: Make America Vaccinated Again
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” — Isaac Asimov
A foul-mouthed Montana farmboy very likely saved your life. What he grew up to do with chicken leukemia, monkey kidneys, and mouse brains in blenders is the reason millions of children now survive to adulthood. He is the reason you are not paralyzed by polio or deaf from mumps.
Don’t know what an iron lung is? You have Dr. Maurice Hilleman to thank.
He unceasingly dedicated his life to saving children from preventable diseases and developed vaccines for meningitis, hepatitis A and B, pneumonia, and chickenpox.
American children used to die by the tens of thousands at the turn of the twentieth century from now preventable diseases like diphtheria, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, measles, mumps, rubella, and smallpox.
Now, eight million American children survive every year because of just one man’s extraordinary contributions to science. Because a boy who lost his twin sister at birth and his mother just days later grew up to invent virology and hone the science of creating and combining vaccines.
Hilleman’s scientific curiosity started young. Growing up, he questioned his Lutheran pastor about the physics of faith, refusing to believe in the transubstantiation of wine into blood. He suggested pumping his stomach and testing it but his pastor told him he didn’t have enough faith -the experiment would surely fail because he wasn’t a believer. “Ok,” Hilleman responded. “Let’s pump your stomach then.”¹
Vaccines are miraculous in their efficacy but their invention is no miracle. And microbiologist, virologist, and epidemiologist Dr. Hilleman is perhaps the most miraculous scientist you’ve never heard of. He is almost singularly responsible for more than 40 vaccines — many of which we now take for granted as part of routine pediatric appointments for school enrollment.
When Hilleman was graduating high school he turned down a “coveted career-track job at JCPenney” near the Tongue River in Miles City, Montana. The man who went on to pioneer the combination of multiple vaccines and discover viral mutation almost took a very different path.² But full scholarships carried him through his PhD and his award-winning dissertation on chlamydia.³
Seventy years later, me-first America leads the world in preventable Covid deaths. 1.03 million of the 6.38 million deaths worldwide* hail from “the greatest country in the world” — a country that could easily be fully vaccinated.
Those trumpeting “American exceptionalism” and “America first” must reckon with our record-breaking American failures too.
Here, in the land of the brave and the home of the free, heavily armed homegrown terrorists kill our schoolchildren and crowds of innocent people. Instead of protecting kids, we perpetuate mass shootings, protect guns, and coddle the tantrum-throwing adults who can’t self-identify as American without assault weapons.
It’s no surprise some Americans aren’t willing to protect each other just by getting vaccinated.
Hilleman saved countless WWII soldiers from Japanese encephalitis. He tested his own plasma-derived hepatitis B vaccines on himself in a cafeteria. He fired the researcher who wouldn’t test his own product on himself and then asked the lab cafeteria staff to take the vaccine too.
The man who won the Congressional service medal and discovered viral mutation understood vaccines had to adapt too — just like viruses do.
COVID is no exception. The mutations are mutating. The omicron variant BA.2.75 is potentially antibody resistant and scientists are concerned about its supercontagion potential. Scientists are not the enemy; mutating viruses are.
Unfortunately, Dr. Hilleman lived long enough to see the rise of the anti-vax movement in the 1980s. This unfounded fear-based movement paralleled the corporate shrinkage of financing vaccine research and continues today. Even more unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to see us through the COVID crisis.
Vaccines are difficult to access in many parts of the world, often requiring complicated logistics like requesting time off work and navigating slow, crowded, and expensive public transportation. The lack of consistently available information about clinic locations, hours, and whether or not appointments are required can complicate this brief and simple procedure. Adequate refrigeration is compromising vaccine stability in a number of countries.
In Mexico, the Guardia Nacional is both protecting and administering vaccines in Colima and Jalisco states. In Colima City, people are reportedly stealing vaccines.
In my home state of Oregon, the vaccination rate is currently 69.7% of our 4.13 million population. Alabama is the lowest at 51.2% and Rhode Island, with a population of just over a million ranks as the most fully vaccinated state at 82.7%⁴
Americans can access vaccines in countless locations for free and yet many still refuse. But what better way to honor an unsung American hero, dear patriots, than to trust Dr. Hilleman’s legacy of lifesaving science and get vaccinated?
Every medically cleared American should be vaccinated.
Yes, Fellow Christian. You Should Get Vaccinated.
Why Is Your Freedom More Important Than My Rights?
Don’t Want to Get Vaccinated? Sign a Treatment Waiver.
Hilleman: A Perilous Quest to Save the World’s Children https://curiositystream.com/video/3928
https://www.montana.edu/news/11470/the-man-who-saved-millions
https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker
*Total COVID deaths worldwide as of July 25, 2022