Something silly and sort of scary for a Sunday morning.

Um, Yay for being old enough to have had a smallpox vaccination? But I wonder it that's one of those that wears off without boosters.

And I've been double vaccinated for Polio. I changed school districts during the school year and had to eat those sickly sweet sugar cubes twice, because no-one believed I had done it before.

I also remember TB tests being given to everyone in the school every couple of years as just routine, as well as lining up all the kids in school for polio or smallpox vaccine, or routine vision tests and scoliosis checks. We don't seem to take epidemics (or public health in general) as seriously as we used to, maybe because we haven't had one is quite a while.

"That's going to change" sure sounded ominous! (On the other hand, I was amused by your "cutting people up" line.)

I'm with the commenter who had the classic smallpox, TB, etc. shots in school. BTW no smallpox booster needed because, inter alia, it's not a threat anywhere (at least currently).

Hugz (not around Ebola victims!),
Justine

Oh wow, I'd forgotten. I remember the scoliosis and the hearing and vision checks in school. It never occurred to me when I was student teaching in elementary schools in 1998-2000 that nobody was doing them anymore.

My mother remembered that my older sister was old enough to have been, and my younger not old enough. Me, she waffled about until after the day I noticed something in the bathroom mirror, and showed it to her the next time: "Say, isn't this a smallpox vaccination scar?"