Have you had yours?
By
Gerry Niskern
That seems to be the question everyone asks these days. Have you had your booster shot? How’d it go?
I was discouraged to hear that some young members of our extended family weren’t getting vaccinated for Covid l9; yet these same young people had enjoyed the benefit of having the protection provided by the vaccinations they had received from birth on. That wasn’t always the case.
When I was a kid you were not allowed to start grade school unless you were vaccinated for Smallpox. Diptheria, Whooping Cough and Scarlet Fever were still around and if someone in your family was diagnosed with Scarlet Fever the whole family was ordered quarantined in the home for a month.
I think Polio was the most dreaded. The newsreels at the movies always seemed to show children with Polio in iron lungs. We were no allowed to be in crowds in the summertime as it was most virulent then.
I will never forget the paralyzing fear that held my young husband and I when our first born was around 7 months and ran a l04 temperature for several days. The Doctor couldn’t diagnose it. Polio! That was always the first thought. We were actually happy when she finally broke out with German measles!
She and her brothers all suffered through Chickenpox, Mumps, and other measles, but when she was 7 the Salk vaccine came out against Polio. I can’t begin to describe how incredibly grateful we were to get it for our kids.
By the time our kids had kids of their own, the vaccines were given from birth thru 24 months, and parents haven’t had to worry about Polio, Smallpox, Diptheria, Whooping Cough and numerous other diseases that used to kill kids en masse.
We’ve all been so fortunate that Science has made such great strides. So that’s why I’m bewildered by the choice not to be vaccinated for Covid to help control the spread, when you have benefited from all those other vaccines all your life and so have your kids.