# How painful do those smallpox vaccinations look?!? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 16, 2002, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-painful-do-those-smallpox-vaccinations-look/143080 "2002-12-16T14:53:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2002, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-painful-do-those-smallpox-vaccinations-look/143080/1 "2002-12-16T14:53:52Z")
Dear God! Stop showing this to me, TV land! All the poking and proding, the needle with the huge tip on the end, the jabbing and stabbing! Holy crap does that look painful. Personally, I think I’d rather wait until I’m in a fevered, dulusional state of smallpox infection to get that vaccination when I’m all hopped up on drugs. Who’s with me? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2002, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-painful-do-those-smallpox-vaccinations-look/143080/2 "2002-12-16T14:56:43Z")
It doesn’t hurt all that much. The needle is only breaking the skin, not going in all that deeply. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2002, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-painful-do-those-smallpox-vaccinations-look/143080/3 "2002-12-16T15:04:30Z")
Yeah, it’s more of a scratch than a poke. It’s a big nothing, but the wound itself makes a pretty ugly boo-boo. No big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2002, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-painful-do-those-smallpox-vaccinations-look/143080/4 "2002-12-16T15:59:40Z")
It’s a bifurcated needle, so just picture your skin being pricked (not really jabbed, just pricked) with a tiny little two-pronged fork over and over. It would be like being a giant in pixie hell. “Eeee! Feel my pitchfork, meat mountain!” Anyway, there are different kinds of injections, from intramuscular (profoundly painful, as it uses a needle the size of God Itself to penetrate muscle) to subcutaneous (really, really wimpy, as it just gets the stuff beneath the first few layers of skin). The smallpox vaccine is the second type mentioned. I’m getting one as soon as I can. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2002, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-painful-do-those-smallpox-vaccinations-look/143080/5 "2002-12-16T16:17:42Z")
Not painful at all. Here we used to administer the vaccine to _babies_. It doesn’t hurt a bit. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2002, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-painful-do-those-smallpox-vaccinations-look/143080/6 "2002-12-16T16:19:43Z")
It’s been years since these shots were given routinely, but I got them as a kid. They weren’t so much painful as irritating- it was rather tichy for a few days.