As a child I was compelled to take vaccinations in order to attend school. My buddy in the military tells me he was "voluntold" to give blood for his fellow soldiers, nevermind all the vaccines they were required to take. Back then, vaccine denial was a loony left fringe thing, and now it seems to be a mainstream conservative position. Times change I suppose, but I do remember the old days.

Reading about successes fighting polio with vaccines, or just remembering a standard practice in American health system to routinely vaccinate people - with rather few exceptions - shows a big difference with COVID-related vaccine controversy. What's that different?..

The biggest difference is Polio crippled kids and they were vaccinating kids, whereas COVID mostly kills grandparents and leaves most kids unscathed.

Also, now we have facebook.

One of the un-fun potential answers to the Fermi Paradox is “everyone invents something like Facebook eventually”.

Also Polio vaccines are much, much more effective and even amongst these groups (i.e. children for Polio and seniors for Covid) Covid is much less dangerous.