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Faunsdale, AL | I certainly agree that a lot of other technology and progress has had dramatic effects on health and longevity as well as quality of life.
I’m not arguing that if they could have been well vaccinated that life in our grandparents and great grandparents time would have been trouble free. I think they would have had a better life if even 1/4 of the deaths could have been prevented by something like vaccination. They understood this and by and large accepted smallpox vaccination and other public health measures to combat disease. Though sometimes with some kicking and screaming about the impact it had on their life.
I am arguing that even today, with everything we have going for us, if a significant part of our population refuses vaccination, the cost to society as a whole is dramatic. In healthcare costs, in disruption of schedules and absenteeism and yes in death rates. Old people and children still die from flu and COVID and RSV and even measles in spite of the best care we really can’t afford, but we provide anyway.
There’s simply no other intervention that we can make in our children’s lives that takes away as much potential for hospitalization and death even here in the 21st century. It’s not a choice between a good diet or vaccination, or not having children work in mines and vaccination. For us, in our time, it’s simply a choice between “anti” ideology and the scientific consensus.
The graphs David posted show in the big scale what happened before measles vaccination became available in 1963. It is in such large scale that the time since 1963 doesn’t show any detail. I think the graph I linked to shows that period in better detail.
Neither graph show the difference between vaccinated populations and unvaccinated. For better or worse, as in the real world we’re all lumped together! We get a stark version of that in real life today when you see the case rate of people who are vaccinated against measles and those who aren’t.
It’s disheartening to see a disease outbreak in our country that would not be happening if there wasn’t a poorly vaccinated population to feed it. On the surface of it, it doesn’t affect me or my children. The problem is it does affect many people that aren’t “anti”. These are the babies younger than a year that haven’t been vaccinated, the kids with leukemia who are on chemotherapy, adults with transplanted organs and many others in our society that depend on herd immunity. And yes that includes me and my kids. I might be among the 3% for whom the measles vaccine is not protective.
A few years back I got a “whack up side the head” reminder that I’m susceptible to viruses. I’ve always been the one in the family that missed the “bug” or had a light case when it ran through everyone else. To this day, I have never had a bad case of the flu and I’ve always felt like there wasn’t a whole lot in the world I needed to worry about catching. My youngest kid brought hand foot and mouth virus home from school and gave it to me. He was over it in a week, but it was just getting going on me!
The good thing about this virus is it doesn’t itch or hurt or make you feel bad after the initial sore throat and ulcers in the mouth, but it makes red spots all over your hands, face, nose, lips ears and feet. Sort of a limited, “demonstrator” version of chicken pox or measles, the perfect disease just to show you what a virus can do to a healthy person. The spots kept developing for at least 2 weeks and then everywhere they had been, the skin peeled off. Nothing painful about it, it’s a well mannered “childhood” disease that apparently has no long term effects like we wish measles and chicken pox didn’t, but it showed me that if I’m exposed to the wrong virus, I’m as susceptible as anybody else. Other than the education, I also got new skin on hands and feet, so not a callus on me anywhere for a while.
I have more respect for viruses than I used to. I realize that I’m not Superman better than I did before. Sometimes it takes a whack to get my attention I guess!
Edited by ccjersey 3/30/2025 10:24
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Please believe in science.
