Vaccines: A Fight We Shouldn't Have to Fight

I've been reflecting on vaccines a lot lately. 

At first, I was thinking I grew up in a golden age of public health, and in a relative sense, I did — mostly after the polio vaccine (kindergarten sugar cubes...I think, then later, that scarring shot in the arm). Rubella shots. Later for tetanus.

But I did have the measles before all that, and I think that was after the vaccine was available in my state. My mother was afraid my little sister, about 2, was going to die. At least one of my older sisters also had mumps, though I think we youngers avoided catching it. And of course, all of us had chicken pox. 

One of my grad school friends, and her younger sister, were hospitalized and nearly died at early school-age from post-chicken-pox complications.

I had HPV for decades. It complicated my health care for a long time and officially cleared up on its own only five or 10 years ago. Until 2009, I did not get flu shots (and I never had the flu... self-reinforcing). H1N1 that year pushed me toward action. And then there has been our series of covid vaccines. And the shingles vaccine — I'm grateful for that, even though the second shot reaction was not fun for a day and a half or so. Better than having shingles by far!

Daughter Number Three-Point-One is just old enough to have caught chicken pox before the vaccine was released, but she has been able to benefit from every other vaccine that came out before and after that point. I made sure she had every HPV vaccine shot in the regimen also, and I'm now extra happy she did. 

A post of mine from 2009 has some still-good information on vaccine risks (which are infinitesimal) vs. the odds of dying of the targeted disease or other causes of death in young people. 

This image from Edward Tufte, the OG of information graphics, has been making the rounds at BlueSky:

(Click to enlarge for readability.)

As has this image for some reason:

I saw it from George Takei, who said, "Who made this? Ahahaha."