As a child growing up in NYC I remember getting my series of polio shots. I stood in line with my parents and brother at the health department. The line was long. The other shot was in the elementary school cafeteria. In my neighborhood there was a boy my age who had polio and had to use crutches and legs braces to get around while the rest of us ran off the baseball field every summer day. Of course, all the parents new President Roosevelt had contracted polio and used a wheel chair. Stop vaccinating children and watch the horror return. If it does, I hope those kids afflicted sue their parents.
The mess with covid gave vaccination a blot on its reputation among the foolish who are with us. Many of us who have gained some wisdom in life know to think things through and not panic. Vaccination has brought many diseases under control. It is a great success of modern civilization.
Our conquest of polio is a good example of one of the great host of successes that vaccination gave us. Polio is rare indeed today. Vaccination is the reason. The first vaccine came available when I was a few months old. My mother, a nurse legally authorized to give vaccinations where we lived in southern Minnesota, dragged me in to the Mayo Clinic and gave me the shot herself. I was among the first kids to get the shot and one of the youngest. When confronted with polio, my mother was not going to take anything lightly. She lost her best friend to polio during nursing school, was with her when she died. Even though polio vaccine was then barely beyond an experimental thing, my mother knew vaccines and she was determined not to lose her only (at the time) child to polio. She went on to have fourteen children, every one of whom received every immunization personally at her hand. None have ever had any trouble with any diseases that turned big families into small families routinely less than a century ago.
It is when the states enforced laws requiring immunization to attend school and laws requiring universal school attendance that these diseases were brought under control. Vaccination became so successful that today people actually question with a straight face whether such diseases are exaggerated. They are not! Take it from me, old enough to know by experience, vaccination works! It is well worth any tiny risk.
As a child growing up in NYC I remember getting my series of polio shots. I stood in line with my parents and brother at the health department. The line was long. The other shot was in the elementary school cafeteria. In my neighborhood there was a boy my age who had polio and had to use crutches and legs braces to get around while the rest of us ran off the baseball field every summer day. Of course, all the parents new President Roosevelt had contracted polio and used a wheel chair. Stop vaccinating children and watch the horror return. If it does, I hope those kids afflicted sue their parents.
ReplyDeleteThe mess with covid gave vaccination a blot on its reputation among the foolish who are with us. Many of us who have gained some wisdom in life know to think things through and not panic. Vaccination has brought many diseases under control. It is a great success of modern civilization.
ReplyDeleteOur conquest of polio is a good example of one of the great host of successes that vaccination gave us. Polio is rare indeed today. Vaccination is the reason. The first vaccine came available when I was a few months old. My mother, a nurse legally authorized to give vaccinations where we lived in southern Minnesota, dragged me in to the Mayo Clinic and gave me the shot herself. I was among the first kids to get the shot and one of the youngest. When confronted with polio, my mother was not going to take anything lightly. She lost her best friend to polio during nursing school, was with her when she died. Even though polio vaccine was then barely beyond an experimental thing, my mother knew vaccines and she was determined not to lose her only (at the time) child to polio. She went on to have fourteen children, every one of whom received every immunization personally at her hand. None have ever had any trouble with any diseases that turned big families into small families routinely less than a century ago.
It is when the states enforced laws requiring immunization to attend school and laws requiring universal school attendance that these diseases were brought under control. Vaccination became so successful that today people actually question with a straight face whether such diseases are exaggerated. They are not! Take it from me, old enough to know by experience, vaccination works! It is well worth any tiny risk.