You can seriously get a gigantic thing of huge, cold shrimp with a little bowl of cocktail sauce in the middle at Costco for maybe $20. No work, no bullying!

I’ve read at least one thing that indicates the same.

My Dad had polio. The whole reason for this stupid anti-vaccine movement is that people have no idea what it was like to be quarantined and face the horror of diseases of old. There’s a reason why people wanted to put monuments up for Salk. My general sense is that people think these diseases aren’t so bad. Those…

My grandfather was the only one that survived in his family when the Spanish Flu came to the reservation. At the time, he was a toddler. He was alone for a few days before he was discovered. Illnesses used to wipe out entire families and we forget that.

It’s tough to have your child endure getting shots - as my 4 y/o son just got 4 booster shots today - but I just keep telling myself to “Mom up! This is way better than the alternatives!” Lil man was a serious trooper though. He bragged about having to get 4! shots!

For those of us who were born and raised abroad and saw and suffered some of these diseases and lots of childbirth maternal death...the anti-vaxers and the “natural childbirth” crowd are just morons, all of them.

as of May 28, 2008, there were approximately 30 patients in the USA still using an iron lung.[28] That figure may be inaccurately low; Houston alone had 19 iron lung patients living at home in 2008.

It ought to be beyond imagination that people could be so privileged, they are fighting to throw away their advantages. Yet here we are.

My mom is also a polio survivor. Post-polio syndrome is so heartbreaking, coming back again for those who survived, after they have endured so much already, and for many at a time in their lives when they are again the most vulnerable. Best wishes to our mothers and all polio survivors, and may the anti-vaxxers rot in…

This is my mom when she was a girl. She survived polio when she was five years old and was never again able to walk without the aid of crutches or a wheelchair. She caught polio shortly before the vaccine was available. She said she remembers being terrified of catching polio and one day going for a long and very fast…

I’ve said this here before, but my specialty (pediatrics) exists because getting kids through their first 12 years of life was kind of a big deal for a long, long time. Vaccines have literally changed the entire scope of practice. The doctors that trained me saw things weekly that I’ve seen maybe ONCE. The Pediatric…

It’s notable that the highest concentration of anti-vaxxers are in the wealthiest counties in our nation. I think the anti-vax mentality is a natural outgrowth of the social, political, geographical, and ideological protective isolation these privileged folks live in. They truly don’t encounter need or want or other…

My mother had polio. My MOTHER. I am one generation removed from polio and I get to see how the pain of having suffered that illness has affected her throughout her life. I see the scars that cover her legs from the Braces she had to wear as a child and the surgeries she had to endure. Giant Frankensteinlike like…

My grandmother was in a sanatarium for just under a year, in 1947 or so. She’s in her mid-90s now and is losing her mobility due to post-polio syndrome. A few years ago I saw a photo of her from just before she was stricken in her mid 20s. I didn’t recognize her, because she was standing up straight. I’ve only ever…

I think it’s also just enormous ego. I knew a guy (a PhD in a technical field no less) who literally believed if his genes were susceptible to bad outcomes from vaccine preventable diseases, he wouldn’t be here to propagate them, therefore it was unnecessary to vaccinate his kid. He knew exactly what these diseases…

Actually, I think these people are instead responding with panic to the *modern* health epidemics we’re facing, but don’t have easy answers for. Like how people used to think all kinds of shit caused polio or the flu before the vaccines came- they were just grasping at straws because they were scared out of their…

My mother contracted polio as a toddler. She has vague memories of her treatments, but I clearly remember my aunt telling the story of the day my mom came home and they all cried and cried in relief.

Yep. Yep yep yep. If you order tea in a place where people don’t generally drink (hot, black) tea, and it tastes like shit, its ALWAYS because they didn’t place boiling water immediately over the leaves/bag. Water from a coffee percolator is not acceptable. Water that has been sitting, even in a thermos, is not…