So the morans were out demonstrating against stay-at-home orders with signs reading “1776” and twisted versions of Revolutionary War slogans such as “Give Me Liberty or Give Me COVID-19.” If they had been around back in 1776, we might still be part of the British Empire.
So a little history lesson is in order. If I staged a counter-protest, I’d hold up a sign reading “1777.” After the Redcoats had captured the American capital of Philadelphia, George Washington encamped his 12,000-man Continental Army in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. About 1,700 to 2,000 soldiers died from disease during the six months from December 1777 to June 1778. from outbreaks of typhoid, dysentery, influenza and pneumonia.
The death toll might have been even worse — possibly eliminating the Continental Army as an effective fighting force — if Washington had not taken immediate steps to curb an outbreak of smallpox at Valley Forge. Washington ordered an investigation and discovered that several thousand troops had not gotten inoculated against smallpox.
Washington instituted “the first large-scale, state -sponsored immunization campaign in history,” historian Elizabeth A. Fenn wrote in her book “Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82.”
Washington continued the inoculation program for new recruits, enabling the regular Continental Army to remain an effective fighting force until victory at Yorktown in 1781.
In the Revolutionary War, an estimated 17,000 American soldiers died of disease, while 6,800 were killed in battle.
George Washington knew how to curb a dangerous outbreak of a deadly disease. Donald Trump doesn’t.