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President Joe Biden recently announced his intention of marking July Fourth as the start of a “summer of freedom,” thanks to the amazing success of the coronavirus vaccines.
This joining of Independence Day with “independence from the virus” echoes the dual freedom the people of Boston felt in the summer of 1776. Smallpox, a deadly viral disease known as the “king of terrors,” broke out again across New England in 1773 and exploded during the Revolutionary War. And so, as Americans were fighting the British and drafting the Declaration of Independence, they also recognized that political independence did not mean much without security from disease — and that meant seizing the opportunity to be immunized when it arrived.