On 2019-05-19 8:53 a.m., graham wrote:
> On 2019-05-19 2:43 a.m., dsi1 wrote:

>> Ignorance and fear of science and technology is strong these days.
>
> Especially among the anti-vaxers! Idiots all!!!!!!!!

Being born in 1950, I started school in 1955. I had had chickenpox,
mumps and measles as an infant and was lucky not to have suffered any
long term effects. Others were no so lucky. We had a number of kids in
our school who had to wear leg braces due to partial paralysis resulting
from having contracted polio. They were pretty dorky looking. Think of
Forrest Gump, but without the miraculous recovery. Never mind the social
effects of being a gimp in the 50s, the suffered the effects for thea
rest of their lives. Even the mildest cases came back decades later and
caused mobility problems.

Those were the older kids. My contemporaries were lucky. We had vaccine
in the primary grades, and I don't know of a single child from the those
lower grades who ever got polio. Vaccinations have also reduced the
incidence of lockjaw, rabies, smallpox, measles, mumps and other serious
and other communicable disease.