Everywhere treated variolation (deliberate infection in order to build immunity) as not being a serious proposal. It’s now clear it would have been a big win.
One criticism I heard of ‘giving (more) people an untested vaccine’, on the surface boiled down to:
could be worse than deliberate infection.
Might not protect against it
It might not be a big deal (over here)
(This was based around a historical anecdote.)
I’ve found my intuition are different for ‘give untested vaccine to informed volunteers’ versus ‘variolation’.
One criticism I heard of ‘giving (more) people an untested vaccine’, on the surface boiled down to:
could be worse than deliberate infection.
Might not protect against it
It might not be a big deal (over here)
(This was based around a historical anecdote.)
I’ve found my intuition are different for ‘give untested vaccine to informed volunteers’ versus ‘variolation’.