My Smallpox Vaccine Scar

And my gratitude that I have it.

Back in elementary school, one of my classmates, Edgar, wore these braces.

I was just a kid, and it was weird, but ultimately I never gave it much thought.

Now I know that it was because he had polio.

If you’re my age you likely have the remnants of an old smallpox vaccine scar.

I can vaguely remember lining up with everyone else at school for the vaccination. I think it had multiple needles, and it probably hurt like heck. Over the following week it created a great big scab, which eventually fell off, leaving a dime-sized circle behind. Every single person had that scar.

I’m honestly fed up with the anti-vax crowd. Measles vaccine, smallpox vaccine, polio vaccine, and all the other vaccines that we got saved lives. Fluoride in water kept our teeth from rotting. Pasteurizing milk kept us from drinking diseases. There is literally NO evidence to the contrary.

Thinking about all of this I now understand that in the wake of two World Wars people understood the concept of duty, and the concept of shared responsibility. They understood that we all have a role to play, and that looking out for each other is what makes us stronger.

So we all got vaccinated, and our governments instituted things like health care, and free education, and pensions, and unemployment insurance. It was understood that in the long run, keeping people housed, and fed, and healthy, and educated cost less than not doing so.

(And, to be clear, this has been proven true every time that anyone has ever studied it.)

Now we have one group of fools that thinks vaccinations are evil. And one group of fools that thinks global warming is mythical. And one group of fools that thinks that safety regulations are an infringement. And of course, the group of fools that feels that they know better than trained educators and librarians what children should be learning in order to succeed in life.

And another group that seemingly believes that all government except for police should be abandoned.

It feels as if it’s all out of control. It strikes me today that a lot of the blame rests with the Internet. Anyone can publish literally anything today at no cost whatsoever. In times when doing this cost you the price of printing, or of buying a radio or television station, the idiots were largely confined to a very, very small audience.

Now any deranged fool can post nonsense to YouTube or Facebook and build enough of an audience to make money and spread lies.

But don’t be distracted: the problem is not the fools and the idiots. It’s the billionaires who own Facebook, and Twitter, and Google that refuse to accept any responsibility for what is distributed on their platforms. Who refuse to acknowledge the damage that they are doing, the lives that they are destroying.

Each of those corporations, if they chose, could rein in the anti-science fools, and the neo-Nazis, and the misogynists and racists. It’s a choice that they could make, but they do nothing.

So the challenge now is for intelligent people to find a way to spread truthful, honest, and science-based information to reach an equally wide audience.