In 1943...

 In 1943…

In 1943 when I was born, the government required my parents to vaccinate me against Smallpox.

I never got Smallpox. In fact, nobody in the world has caught Smallpox in many years. It’s eradicated.

When I started school in 1948, I had to have inoculations against Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus. I never caught any of those, either.

In 1955, I was required to get inoculated against Poliomyelitis. I knew several people who had caught that disease before there was a vaccine. One boy in school had braces on his leg, as did one man and a woman in our church. Our church “Singing Band” went on Saturday afternoons to sing hymns to a lady in an iron lung, because polio had paralyzed her from the neck down, and she couldn’t breath without the help of a machine.

I was happy I never got polio.

In 1961 I got another vaccination against polio. The first one, the Salk vaccine worked well but not perfectly. It was administered by needle. The new ones by Sabin and Cox in 1961 were more effective against all three variations of the virus. They had the vaccine in sugar cubes that were flavored like cherries. Tasted good, and they came in three doses a month apart.

Polio is eradicated everywhere in the world now except Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s too bad, but they don’t trust Americans anymore. Can’t blame them I guess.

In 1965  the US Army shipped me to the Orient. We were required to have shots for Typhus, Typhoid, Cholera, Influenza, and Yellow Fever. The only reaction I had was to the flu shot, probably because I already had the flu. Nobody else got the flu.

I didn’t get any of those other diseases.

In 1968 I was a regular visitor at the house of a family in southern California. I had gone to college with him years before, and learned a lot about mechanics, machinist stuff, and common sense.

One day a girl staying with the family, named Darlene, came down with mumps. It was well known that sometimes the mumps “went down” and left men sterile. So Laverna, the mother, called the doctor and arranged for several of us men to go down and get shots. Don, Kenneth, David, and myself all got in the car and drove to the doctor’s office and got Gamma Globulin shots to try to prevent us from catching mumps.

The inoculations must have worked because we never got mumps, and some of us have had children in the years since.

In the rest of my life, I have gotten several “booster” shots for Tetanus, because of minor injuries acquired due to working in a machine shop and on a ranch.

Last January and February, I got vaccinated against the Covid virus. I personally know two people, not that old or decrepit, who were hospitalized due to that virus. I also know of a couple of acquaintances who died of it, but not close friends. Luckily. Yet.

I still take precautions not to spread the virus, because one of the wild cards with this disease is that it can be spread by those without symptoms. That includes the already vaccinated. It spreads fast and hits some people really hard.

As most of us do, I have friends and relatives who prefer to believe paid propagandists rather than doctors and scientists who have studied infectious diseases all their lives.

Stupidity abounds!