Kim Beckham, an insurance agent in Victoria, Texas, had seen friends suffer so badly from shingles that she wanted to receive the first approved shingles vaccine as soon as it became available, even if she had to pay for it out-of-pocket.
The numbers must be skewed though, many of the anti-vaxxers don’t get to be old because they make stupid choices.
Of course they do. They remember fucking POLIO. They know this is not bullshit. This isn’t Gen X Karen on her guru Facebook group telling her it will give her kid artism.
Gen-X here.
I grew up on my boomer parents stories of what polio was like when they were kids, knowing people in iron lungs, and then what it was like when the vaccine was developed and made available.
I adore vaccines and think that anyone who doesn’t is unworthy to continue breathing. I do not and will not apologize for that, because I’m right.
Same. Both my mother and my uncle liked to show off their polio vaccine scar. They were proud of it. I’m really glad they’re not like that anymore, but I absolutely am extremely thankful for the wide variety of vaccines available now.
*smallpox
Smallpox was the one that left a scar. But yeah. I’m like, “Gimme all the vaccines!”
the only time I was ever hesitant about a vaccine was the smallpox vaccine that they brought out just as I was enlisting. It was widly reported that it was risky to take, as it contained actual virus, rather than just the recognition bits.
In retrospect, I have no idea if the reporting was accurate, misinformed, or fearmongering. But at the time, it worried me.
We (Marines floating in a Navy ship) got those shots after being shown a power point on ship. It showed pics on someone that scratched the scab and got his eye infected with small pox. Everyone was scared about having their scab fall off and treated it like an extreme biohazard.
Probably better to be over cautious though.
being anti-vaccine is being pro disease
Just this past weekend my mom said she was struggling to decide whether or not to get the shingles vaccine. She was afraid she would get chickenpox from it. Her doctor told her that’s impossible and I told her the doctor was right. In the end she said she is getting it first thing this week.
That’s because many older people remember being sick with diseases that have since become preventable thanks to vaccines. I remember the long lines at a local high school for the polio vaccine. Parents couldn’t vaccinate their kids fast enough. I missed a week of Little League baseball because my parents decided that at age 12, I was too old for the measles vaccine. I’ll be getting vaccinated in a back alley if I have to, there’s no way I’m going back to the 1950s.
“I’ll take ‘Duh’ for $200, Alex.”
