My mother was born in 1923. I remember her talking about the fear of polio in every family. Like some kind of ghost - it came without warning to strike children. Everyone knew someone stricken with it.
My oldest sister was born in 1953. My mother and her friends all thought that Jonas Salk was a saint and the vaccine which came in 1955 was a true miracle.
we are generations past the time when such diseases were common, and I think people today can’t grasp the magnitude of the benefit vaccines have given humanity.
Vaccines are great—but the “standard” vaccines have years if not decades of human testing behind them.
Rushing new vaccines and then trying to cram them down people’s throats is a bait and switch tactic.
Polio,smallpox are great examples of needed vaccinations, but not the childhood ones we get shots for everything
This, 1000%. I haven't yet met an anti-vaxxer who was around for the serious diseases we wiped out with vaccines. The sentiment I see now about how smallpox and polio weren't so bad, or how we could cure them by just having indoor plumbing and washing our hands; it's downright shocking. But at the same time, I'm continuously thankful to live in a time where people can't even imagine the horrors of those diseases.
I think that's part of what enabled the media and the Democrats to spark such a panic with COVID-19: people had no idea what to make of a new disease spreading without some sort of vaccine or treatment sitting at the ready. "New flu? Whatever, we've got flu shots and Tamiflu!" Decades ago, if it wasn't as bad as polio, it wasn't that scary.
Exactly. How many children do you know that have died from diphtheria pertussis or polio? Let alone measles or mumps? 100 years ago it would. it would not be uncommon to have 1/2 your children fail to reach age 5. More recently the hemophilus meningitis vaccine has saved many infants and young children from death and disability along with the pneumococcal vaccine. Bacterial meningitis has become rare thank God
Nothing will convince the anti-vaxxers.
My father was a polio survivor who spent the year 1945 in an iron lung. We got every vax available, any whining got the “you want a withered limb like mine?” lecture regardless of what the shot of the day was.
I’m excited by the mRNA technology. This is going to lead to customized cancer vaccines. Take a sample of the tumor and synthesize a vaccine for it that will teach your own immune system to recognize and kill the cancer cells. Chemo and surgery will become last resort treatments.
You remember the stories about children getting polio, stories told in families everywhere. I remember the day and the feeling of swallowing the sugar cube which contained the Salk anti-polio medicine. Who doesn’t?
It’s impossible to explain to a covid lockdowned public how Americans lived with risks everyday. My own child said today, “You had measles, mumps, chicken pox!?” We all got sick with them and if survived without rare negative consequences thanks to mothers nursing at home, one was happy. Everyone knew that adults have more serious complications from these illnesses so “better to get them in childhood.”
Common sense and knowledge of science, both absent today.