Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 70 years in an iron lung

All vaccines have a risk factor, even the best ones. Of those vaccinated for small pox, there is a very small number who will have a reaction. Some years back, after they'd declared smallpox to be eradicated world wide, they determined that continued vaccinations would put more people at risk than no vaccinations. So, they quit vaccinating for it. Since they quit, no one in the world has caught it.

There are 2 places in the world that have live smallpox virus in storage - the US and Russia. They say they're keeping them in case it should become necessary to remake the vaccines. There's been a continued argument about whether both samples should be killed to prevent any possibility of one escaping or being stolen. Last I heard, both samples are still being kept alive.

I remember trying to talk my dad out of having the shot for polio; he laughed in my face. There is a reason for parents.

Some didn't want that unsightly scar on their left shoulder. One girl had her's done on her thigh!
At that time (mid 50's!) girls just didn't flash their thighs!

Seems some of the polio issues can return in later life. Have a distant friend that beat it as a kid but is now having balance and neural issues surfacing in his early 60's. Still alive, but not as functional as he would like and he's backing out of his commitments and other activities.

I mentioned before that my dad had it in the 50's but made a full recovery...maybe. In his later years (70+), he had a lot of neck pain that nothing could cure. He had a traction devise that he hung from the top of a door that would pull his head up as he sat. It helped a little. He often wondered if it had something to do with the polio but nobody knew for sure.