Even as one appreciates the dawning of insight one wonders: "How young are you?"One of the things I came to understand while writing my book is how we belong to the most vaccine-spoiled generations in human history, and that's maybe one reason so many of us think we don't need them.
— Nina Burleigh (@ninaburleigh) May 18, 2021
I wrote about this for the @nytimes today. https://t.co/h7XFeKGTWo
‘Cause this ain’t exactly a new or original idea. It’s been pretty obvious for decades now, starting at least with the autism/vaccine scare, and then the “there’s mercury in the vaccine!” scare (there was, but there are two kinds of mercury, at least. One is.a toxic heavy metal, the other is not toxic at all). By the time my age cohort was having children there were already people concerned with anti-vax scares (no, it didn’t start with the internet. We managed to “silo” information and have conspiracy theories without social media, believe it or not.), and the blame was laid at the feet of people who missed the polio scare (the last one I remember), or “childhood diseases” that were deadly for our parents (of my generation, I mean) and non-existent for us because of “shots.”
I got a smallpox vaccine, and bore the scar for years. My daughter didn’t need one, but she got the rest of her vaccinations.
I’m guessing Ms. Burleigh’s generation is not mine. I’d safely aver that Boomers are the most “vaccine-spoiled” generation, or certainly the first one. Some of us act like we don’t even remember the polio vaccine, or anyone crippled by it either in our childhoods or in our parents’ childhoods. We certainly don’t remember outbreaks of anything other than measles and chickenpox, both of which are now prevented by vaccines.
Everything old really is new again, isn’t it. Lord, that gets tiresome. It is a wonder sometimes anything gets done. Indeed, I wonder if it really does; or if we just agree it has, only to forget it all a moment later.
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