I’m gettin’ better at this teaching thing. 
(And many thanks to the board as a whole for letting me practice.)
In case nobody else does it, I’d like to personally thank you for taking the hit and asking the “truly stupid questions that the rest of us are too ashamed to admit to having ourselves”.
Even with the anonymity of the internet, it really speaks to your character that you would do this for the sake of making sure good information got out there.
And in case it isn’t clear, no sarcasm intended. I honestly mean it when I say I appreciate it that you are doing this.
I haven’t read this entire thread, so if I’ve missed someone who pointed out the following, then I apologize, but: I think at least a part of the problem is the number of children’s books/TV shows in which multiple kids come down with an illness that we now have a vaccine for, but don’t have any lasting complications. Arthur’s Chicken Pox, On Your Toes, Susie!, The Patchwork Quilt…all right, these were written a long time ago, but many of these were read by people who are now adults and it reinforces the idea that having these illnesses is just a normal part of childhood.
I’m a children’s author, and it makes me think I should write a story in which somebody does have a horrible complication.
I did sell a story in which a child was bitten by a rabid raccoon, and had to be convinced by a friend to tell a parent so she could get the vaccine in time. But even anti-vaxxers don’t seem to argue much about the rabies vaccine.
There was a Famous Five book by Enid Blyton that featured an old abandoned house with a quarantine room for a child with, I think, scarlet fever. There was a definite feel that the kid died.
And let’s not forget The Velveteen Rabbit. Sure, the kid survives scarlet fever but the rabbit gets sent off to be burned. Won’t someone please think of the toy bunnies?
(As an aside, one of my co-workers came down with scarlet fever last year. I didn’t realize that people even still got that.)
Scarlet fever is just a bad case of strep. People usually get it treated by antibiotics before it goes that far. So when someone asks why don’t we see scarlet fever anymore that’s why. It’s also why we don’t have a vaccine for it.
The move “Balto” was all about diphtheria. (At least I think, I didn’t see it).
We just need to educate our children about history more.
Say it with me now, “Spanish Flu.” It killed more people than WWI.
Don’t forget a book in which the main character’s life is positively enhanced by a vaccine-preventable disease - "Melanie’s Marvelous Measles", written by antivaxer Stephanie Messenger.
Surprisingly there haven’t been any sequels yet, like “Willie’s Wonderful Whooping Cough”, “Priscilla’s Precious Polio” and “Harriet’s Hilarious Hib Meningitis”.
As an example, I’ve been vaccinated for rubella three times and blood tests* still show no antibodies. Now it could be a false negative. It could also be that I can’t be sucessfully vaccinated.
- It’s part of the standard prenatal blood tests. I was vaccinated as a child as soon as the rubella shots came out, back when it was done separately. Then I had three children. I got told three times that I wasn’t immune. The first two times, I got the shot at the pediatrician’s, during the first well baby checkup. The third time I just nodded. I figured if I wasn’t immune after three shots, a fourth was unlikely to help.
Now that I’m thinking about it, I may never have been vaccinated for mumps. I was in high school when those came out.
The Great Brain series had at least one storyline where infectious diseases.
There was this link off of one of your links:
http://www.blissfulblightbooks.com/our-titles/peter-s-pleasant-polio
Polio made FDR President of the United States. What could it do for YOUR kid?
Thanks for the link. Those are awe inspiring.
Good fuck.
A children’s author who never read Little Women? Beth March caught scarlet fever from a poor immigrant (German) family that hers was helping out. She eventually died from complications. (Which could include endocarditis & rheumatic fever.) No, there’s never been a good vaccine for scarlet fever but Beth’s heartbreaking story reminds us why prompt detection & treatment of strep throat is important.
(In the Little House books, we were told Mary went blind after scarlet fever. It was probably Meningoencephalitis. )
One of the worst epidemics of modern times was the 1918 pandemic. Which inspired almost no literature. Perhaps, coming just after the Great War, it was too much. Our office will have a visit by a nurse tomorrow–time for our flu shots!
Remember the wonderful children’s book Cheaper by the Dozen? The book about the Gilbreths and their twelve children? IRL, they didn’t have twelve kids. They had eleven because one died of diphtheria. Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame, was married to Almanzo Wilder. He was disabled by a stroke also as a result of diphtheria. Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, lost a daughter to measles.
It’s all in there if you look alas. I read history books each week and there it is again and again and again. Ben Franklin lost a son to smallpox. Go look at an old graveyard. It’s all little babies and kids dead again and again and again from diseases we don’t even think about today.
There was also a kid in the series who basically drops dead just because he has type I diabetes. There was nothing medical science could do for him back then. Diabetes was a death sentence.
I debated this idiot who is convinced his poor daughter has type I diabetes from vaccines last January. Stupid anti-vax shit is screeching about pharm companies and evil scientists when the only damned reason his daughter isn’t dead is because of science.
The only reason we have a polio vaccine is because Big Pharm had more political clout than Big Iron Lung.
My grandfather was in Kansas City, Missouri in 1919, going to auto mechanics school. He told me about seeing whole trainloads of soldiers coming in, all sick with the flu. They ran out of hospital rooms he was told. The little boarding hotel where he roomed had a cot behind the desk, so the clerk/owner could tend to a relative who lay there sick. Shudder.
Not sure if this is just a whoosh but I hope you know how ironically wrong this is. Salk famously refused to patent and profit from his creation.
I vaccinated all my children, including my son with autism. It was a long time a ago, but the group of anti-vax parents at his school were very vocal and openly hostile to me. I also rejected what I saw as invasive therapies like secretin IVs and chelation therapy that so many people subjected their children to, all in the name of “curing” them. It’s quite the fanatical subculture.