Comment Re:Duh (Score 1) 462
When the anti-vaxxers come out of the woodwork it's best to bring out the big guns like polio. My parents have a lot of stories about kids in their school class with polio.
On that score, I can recommend a novel called Nemesis by Philip Roth. I knew absolutely nothing about polio before I read it. For example, I figured polio was a degenerative condition where if you were sick for long enough you'd end up in an iron lung. Nope, you'd go from looking like you had the flu to ending up in an iron lung inside of a couple of weeks. I never knew this because nobody I've ever known, including my grandparents etc, has ever had polio. But once upon a time a lot of people had polio. Vaccination made it go away, and it's absolutely nothing we want coming back.
Chicken pox ain't polio, and to me it was a cake walk, and I never knew anybody who went to the hospital for chicken pox, though I know it happened. But I guess it's better to have a vaccine for it. I mean, when can you ever say that it's worse when we can prevent a disease? I just have this weird thing in my head where it was a rite of passage, and back in the day it was the same for measles et cetera. But ideally speaking, people shouldn't get sick if we can prevent it. It's just the thing.