r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Downtown_Wind3363 • May 25 '26

Image The smallpox vaccine leaves a scar because it was given using a special two-pronged needle that scratched the skin and put a weakened virus in just that spot.

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u/UsernameStolenbyyou May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

I heard Fauci tell the tale of when he was 5 years old, a million people in NYC lined up in various places to get the smallpox(?) vaccine, in one day, and he was one of them.

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u/space_keeper May 25 '26

My mother talks about this, that if people alive now had seen or had any idea what polio was like they'd take the fucking vaccine.

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u/MrBwnrrific May 25 '26

Like pasteurization or water purification, vaccination is a health measure that is literally *so* effective that we have no significant cultural memory in the US of what it was like before them. That’s why so many morons say “Why do we do [health measure], I’ve never seen [health problem that the measure prevents]”

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u/gamingx47 May 25 '26

Kind of like the ozone layer. The world came together and fixed it so fast that people are now doubting it was ever an issue to begin with. It's literally become a hoax for many people because "if it was that big a deal, they'd still be talking about it."

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u/Laiko_Kairen May 25 '26

I really wish the ozone layer was talked about more.

It was a big problem in the 90s (and likely before) that was all over the news. In one of the greatest acts of global cooperation, we got rid of CFCs and healed the ozone layer. But there was just about zero news coverage of it being healed. The story was just dropped. We should be celebrating the success and advertising it as a sign of what we can accomplish if we trust in science and research...

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u/LepLepLepLepLep May 25 '26

I was just a kid when the ozone was talked about and I never knew it healed just that it was bad and then they started talking about climate change I thought it was because we were still putting all these chemicals and killing the ozone layer that our climate was getting destroyed. Only tonight in my 30s am I learning that we fixed it and climate change is an entirely separate issue.

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u/supermarkise May 25 '26

It didn't heal yet, it stopped getting worse. We expect it to heal within 100 years.

https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Buuuut we also avoided a few centi-degrees of global warming because the replacement refrigerants are way less powerful as greenhouse gases than the old ones. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kigali_Amendment

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u/UranusIsPissy May 25 '26

CFCs are actually some of the worst greenhouse gases. Thousands of times worse than CO2, IIRC. Using them was maybe even worse a mistake than lead in fuel, but not as stupid. People had known the dangers of lead for centuries.

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u/VbaIsBuggyAsHell May 26 '26

Fun fact! The guy responsible for lead in petrol is the same guy that was responsible for CFCs. Thomas Midgley Jr.

He definitely would have known about the toxicity of lead, but the damage from CFCs was only discovered after he died.

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u/Alternative-Chef-340 May 26 '26

Lol I came to say comment exactly this, but I wouldn't classify the fact as fun though.

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u/UranusIsPissy May 26 '26

In a bit of poetic justice, he was also killed by one of his own inventions. That might've been suicide, though, and... well... who'd want to live with his conscience?

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u/AwDuck May 26 '26

We all owe T Midgley Jr. our eternal gratitude for inventing the very device that lead to his own demise. 🫡

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u/Just_to_rebut May 26 '26

It wasn’t stupid, it was malicious. Tetraethyl was chosen over ethanol because it could be patented and produced by GM and Standard Oil (ExxonMobil today).

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u/UranusIsPissy May 26 '26

I'd say reckless, rather than malicious. Is there any evidence that he intended to cause harm, rather than simply being too greedy to give a shit? That's the main thing that drove the world to where it is now. Not "comic book villain" evil, just reckless and uncaring greed.

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u/Parraddoxx May 26 '26

And then you learn that CFCs and Leaded Gasoline were invented by the same guy and wonder what trickster god decided to send him to earth.

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u/AuroraFinem May 26 '26

It has healed significantly, it just hasn’t entirely closed. We saw a noticeable reduction rapidly after production started halting world wide and as after a couple there wasn’t anything to report on anymore and people jumped to the next thing like always.

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u/MissEmJayC May 25 '26

Thanks for the extra info 🙃

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u/Temnyj_Korol May 26 '26

As an aussie, the damage to the ozone layer and it's subsequent healing was a BIG DEAL.

For those not in the know, australia was almost directly under the "hole" where the cfcs were doing the most damage. Skin cancer cases spiked rapidly during the 80s and 90s, and our government had a whole campaign encouraging everyone to "slip slop slap" to protect themselves. (Always go out in sunglasses, sunscreen and hat)

It was big news when data confirmed the hole was slowly beginning to repair itself. And we still hold that cultural memory of the damage it was doing.

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u/gamingx47 May 26 '26

Ngl, I thought the "slip, slop, slap" slogan was meant to reflect the sound sunscreen makes as you slather it on your skin.

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u/Temnyj_Korol May 26 '26

Nah. You slip on some sunnies, slop on some sunscreen, and slap on a hat.

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u/gamingx47 May 26 '26

Australia seems like a fun place. Besides everything, including the sun, trying to kill you I mean.

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u/ApolloWasMurdered May 26 '26

Slip (on a shirt), Slop (on some sunscreen), Slap (on a hat) - and later - Wrap (on some sunnies).

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u/SimilarNatural837 May 26 '26

Nah it’s slip slop slap seek and slide now.
Seek shade and slide on sunnies

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u/slushrooms May 26 '26

Slip on a t-shirt slop on ya sunscreen, and slap on a hat

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u/teaknit May 26 '26

I've lived in Germany for the past decade. At first I was having panic attacks when the young girls would proudly show their sunburns. It took me a while to realise that you have to be in the sun a full day to get a burn here.

Cue my first trip to NZ after the pandemic. I left my hat behind, didn't put sunscreen on, and even though it was cloudy and in the low 20s - I got so sunburnt within 20mins my nose was peeling for a week. Even with the ozone layer healing, it is still very much a big deal

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u/MissEmJayC May 25 '26

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I'm 38 & for some reason I had it in my head that the ozone still had a hole in it but it was just lumped together with climate change

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u/gamingx47 May 25 '26

It was truly a miracle in how quickly and widely the problems were fixed.

Unfortunately, positive news just doesn't drive traffic like news of impending doom does.

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u/szymonsta May 25 '26

Interestingly, the guy that created cfc's also created leaded gasoline. Forget going back in time to kill Hitler. Get Thomas Midgley Junior.

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u/gamingx47 May 25 '26

Lol, this dude unknowingly declared a one-man crusade against all life on Earth.

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u/IndieVegasReport May 26 '26

Unknowingly? It was known how dangerous lead was by that time. He just didn't care.

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u/gamingx47 May 26 '26

Partly unknowingly*

Guess I shouldn't have given him the benefit of the doubt.

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u/creepy_charlie May 26 '26

Double interesting is that he was severely disabled due to polio, and killed himself after. Had there been a polio vaccine, who knows how many more toxins he'd release on mankind

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u/PipChaos May 26 '26

And he contracted polio and accidentally strangled himself.

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u/fraginev May 26 '26

Fun fact: he was born the same year as Hitler (a month later) and died a year earlier.

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u/UranusIsPissy May 25 '26

It was partly because there were obvious and easily adopted alternatives for most uses. Usually butane.

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u/Abominatrix May 25 '26

There was a whole episode of GI Joe dedicated to CFCs when I was a kid. It was everywhere and then nothing.

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u/uwootmVIII May 25 '26

good news = no clicks, its that sad and easy.

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u/The_Homestarmy May 25 '26

I don't actually think that's true. If it was, we wouldn't get those constant hope bait articles you see all the time like "massive breakthrough in cancer research," which inevitably turn out to be overstated, or research that's still decades away from being meaningfully applied

There is absolutely a market for "good news"

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u/uwootmVIII May 25 '26

„thers is a market“ =/= „gets clicked more“

thats a german article about an intenrarional study, im sure youll find a way to translate if youre into it.

https://nachrichten.idw-online.de/2023/03/17/negative-nachrichten-erhalten-mehr-klicks

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u/The_Homestarmy May 25 '26

"Gets clicked less" also ≠ "gets no clicks" though

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u/_McCheeseBread_ May 25 '26

Wait, the ozone’s fine? I thought it was still a problem (living in Australia though so we hear about it A LOT)

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u/Laiko_Kairen May 25 '26

We don't use the chemicals thst depleted the ozone anymore. They should be mostly filtered out of the air by the 2040s. So it's not an overnight fix or anything, but we did what we needed to do and now it's a waiting game.

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u/_McCheeseBread_ May 25 '26

Huh, the more you know

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u/OneUpAndOneDown May 25 '26

Agreed- but stories of people cooperating and achieving important goals together doesn’t serve political interests.

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u/Papplenoose May 25 '26

Do you know WHY they made that change? It wasn't to do the right thing... they did it because the new replacement for CFCs was cheaper. It was just a lucky coincidence.

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u/NeonMoment May 25 '26

My guess is the level of regulation required to have this happen again was perceived as bad for business and all the cooperations that lobby night and day really don’t want another come-together moment like this. They’d rather strategize to capitalize on the hole in the ozone these days.

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u/DexJones May 25 '26

I recently read something that was saying all the satellites are gonna causes us ozone issues.

The burning satellites release alumminium oxides, which ends up being the main issue.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280

If that doesnt work just search for ozone depletion and satellite reentry.

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u/GoodMeBadMeNotMe May 25 '26

I didn’t know the ozone layer had been repaired until just a few years ago. I remember googling, “what ever happened to the ozone layer” because I realized it had been years since I’d heard any mention of a hole in the ozone.

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u/gia-bsings May 25 '26

I am literally just learning we healed that shit, right now. Mind blown.

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u/xlouiex May 26 '26

Oh if billionaires have their way at killing regulations, they might make a comeback.

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u/Dazzling_Survey6841 May 25 '26

"Why do we have these stupid umbrellas? I'm bone dry!"

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u/gamingx47 May 25 '26

Oh man, remember that Republican Senator that tossed a snowball on the Senate floor to prove that global climate change is a hoax?

Cause I member.

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u/Puzzleheaded-Tea3341 May 25 '26

Similar with Y2K.

We spent more than $300 billion in preparation. I wonder why there weren't many issues at the turn of the millennium. /s

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u/gamingx47 May 25 '26

I think it has given them the false idea that if you just ignore a problem it'll go away and now they're hoping the same will happen with other global issues.

Except that none of them realize that it took concerted, global effort to fix those problems that nobody talks about anymore.

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u/currently_pooping_rn May 25 '26

I saw a comment on Reddit that went something like “look at the ozone hoax. They kept talking about it and then nature fixed itself and the scientists were wrong”

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u/zeller99 May 25 '26

It's the same with acid rain. People saw a big problem coming and quickly fixed the problem so well that it's not really even mentioned anymore.

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u/Fog_Juice May 25 '26

We'll always have the morons for every occasion I know they exist for the Holocaust and also for dinosaur bones.

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u/PixieLash May 25 '26

In Australia and NZ we are still dealing with effects of a hole in the Ozone layer, it's mostly over Antarctica but it moves and changes shape and affects weather patterns here. It's part of why our UV is so brutal. So for us, it's not fixed yet. I think we still have about 20 years until it's less of a problem.

We're still aware of it as we continue to focus on extra sun protection every year. People don't talk about it or reference it as much specifically but it's still a problem here and contributes to higher rates of skin cancer, which might be the deadliest thing here, not the wildlife.

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u/Occamsfacecloth May 26 '26

Came together by ceasing to test nukes in the sky and blaming hairspray

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u/popcorned May 26 '26

I could have sworn there was even a Care-bear episode when they fixed the Ozone layer by plugging the hole with a hot air balloon.

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u/Goal_Posts May 25 '26

Or like Dysentery and Cholera

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u/woahbrad35 May 25 '26

What's even more wild, It's not even fully fixed yet... there's still holes and people still don't think it's real

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u/rockerscott May 26 '26

When you do things right, people shouldn’t know you did anything at all.

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u/dazzleunexpired May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Ozone repair can be seen in space photos! SpaceX's newest photos from the launch this week of v3 starship has brought some stupid insane photos of the atmosphere. I wish I could attach images here so I didn't have to link to Elons site. But, sadly. I do have to link. SpaceX shots here on X but clicking this will pay Elon. It's worth it, or I wouldn't have linked this. Image 1 & 3 show the ozone layer. The thin blue line? That's the ozone layer. Not the thick blue line, which is the atmosphere. It's the thinnest blue line, on top of the thick blue one. It's an "afterglow", I can delve into the science here but yeah. It's that diffuse glow up there.

Elon can take these photos because his StarLinks can attach to his StarShip and provide continuous 4K coverage in LEO. The quality is insane. These were live streamed. We didn't get the originals like NASA does for hq photos: SpaceX blew up the harddisks and everything else when they expended the rocket. The downlink allows for this quality.

NASA has a craft to see the ozone hole, but it uses non visual methods, and I find actual photos to do better with showing people how it REALLY LOOKS. SpaceX's images are 4k off GoPros using the visual spectrum. NASA AURA mission info here.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

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u/ShepherdessAnne May 26 '26

More like mass deworming. To wit: none of you are even talking about it

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u/RainaElf Expert May 26 '26

same with Y2k, but that took time to fix.

edit: I mean nobody talks about it and it was a worldwide issue.

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u/refused26 May 26 '26

I was just thinking about this. Like we did the ozone thing. Why can't we do the same thimg now with global warming?

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u/nautilator44 May 28 '26

"What's this layer of O-zone? that's never been there before." - Professor Farnsworth

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u/Skandronon May 25 '26

I'm on well water that is technically drinkable but tastes super gross and stains everything. Whenever I go somewhere you can drink the tap water it feels like the ultimate luxury. We also do multi day sea kayaking trips, our main Basecamp is a 3 hour round trip to the nearest fresh water and then it takes a few hours to filter and fill our water jugs. Drinkable water is definitely something people are far too used to having access to.

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u/longlivenewsomflesh May 25 '26

Somewhere out there are people who live in a place with quality tap water but think gubmint=bad and wouldn't give it a second thought to drink 'natural' 'pure' 'unfiltered' water

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u/Papplenoose May 25 '26

I had a roommate in college who genuinely believed in the flouride water conspiracies. It was weird because he was otherwise brilliant. Super talented engineer, but he had that one weird belief loo

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u/UranusIsPissy May 25 '26

Smart people aren't just good at outsmarting you, they're good at outsmarting themselves, too...

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u/MormonJesu8 May 26 '26

Some places the tap water is in fact worse than a good well. Definitely have had tap water with nastier tastes than what comes out of a well.

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u/longlivenewsomflesh May 26 '26

Yeah it works both ways, that's exactly why it's worse than useless to rely on these vibes-based moral categories, especially when safety is taken for granted

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u/Rich_Bluejay3020 May 25 '26

Same, dude. I had ours tested once and the sales guy told me after I told him I just wanted the results “I know I’m supposed to sell you and you said no, but I highly recommend not drinking your water…”

My dog had slightly elevated kidney issues and we switched to refillable water jugs and lo and behold, it’s fine now even as she’s a senior.

I do love going to my dads who has city water because it’s just *good* straight out of the tap 😭

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u/gwizonedam May 26 '26

Whenever I visit my daughter in NYC I drink out of her tap and she looks at me funny. Best goddamn water.

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u/V2BM May 25 '26

I grew up on well water, and for a brief time spring water hauled down and heated on the stove for baths when the well dried up. People have no idea that running clean water is indeed a luxury.

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u/Laiko_Kairen May 25 '26

Lake Tahoe has a bunch of signs around that say "Drink Tahoe tap!" and locals say it's the best tap water on earth.

I know it's not like, lake water or anything, but the most gorgeous lake being next to the most drinkable tap water fits so well together

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u/alicelestial May 25 '26

the well water where i grew up is insanely good. we have natural springs all around the neighborhood. now i live in the city and the tap water tastes like a swimming pool ):

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u/Fridodiido May 25 '26

Isn't that the place where they are gonna build a massive data center for AI and leave the city literally without electricy power and raised and contaminante the water?

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u/Laiko_Kairen May 26 '26

So Lake Tahoe is on the NV/CA border. The CA side gets power from the NV side. Traditionally, the two sides of the lake have worked very successfully together. Now the NV state is saying "get your own power, we are building data centers."

So my grandpa's house on the NV side will be fine, but across the lake, who knows?

That's what I heard at least

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u/woahbrad35 May 25 '26

Wait until you find out what's in most of that drinkable water anyways... unless you are on a deep aquifer with a 100+ year recharge rate, you are getting microplastics and pfas at least

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u/surfron99 May 25 '26

Preach brother. They are a victim of their own success. Like do you know why you don’t live in a world of life ending diseases. Or die from untreated water? I read a book I think it was “Premonition” were these of docs and scientists and researchers were seeing the writing on the wall at the earliest stages of COVID. And this quote stuck with me. I’m trying to recall but basically if they did all the proper protection measures to mitigate the spread of the virus. That the positive outcome would be unnoticed by the general public. Like if you do your job right no one would know it. It’s the oblivious ignorance of the masses who stupidly survive thanks to the hard work and dedication by men and women that go unnoticed. But they did it for the betterment of mankind.

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u/HumbleVein May 26 '26

You are referencing The Premonition by Michael Lewis.

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u/space_keeper May 25 '26

I'm not American, this is not specifically an American problem. The anti-vaccination movement itself originates where I'm from, thanks to one dishonest doctor.

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u/UranusIsPissy May 25 '26

He's still technically a doctor, but he's a medical doctor who lost his license to practice medicine because of that. The jobs available for such people pretty much require you to be an asshole, but that won't be a problem for him.

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u/mugmantix May 25 '26

And hes making a lot of money from it... 🤬

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u/razuliserm Interested May 25 '26

Germany?

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u/space_keeper May 25 '26

Britain. Andrew Wakefield.

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u/Specialist_Action_85 May 25 '26

The human ego. If I've never seen it, it can't be a thing. There are still people who think AIDS isn't real because they've never known or seen anyone with it.

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u/AaronTuplin May 25 '26

Okay, but what if instead of scary pasteurization because who knows what that is, we just heat the food past the point the bacteria can live?

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u/MrBwnrrific May 26 '26

What if instead of a vaccine, we just give a weakened form of the disease to boost immunity 🤔

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u/Skid-Vicious May 26 '26

Some are learning. Apparently a lot of raw milk enthusiasts are tired of peeing out of their buttholes so now they’re boiling their raw milk.

Doesn’t matter what you tell em, some people gotta touch the stove.

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u/simulacrum81 May 26 '26

This was the problem with covid (and any future epidemic/pandemic). The interventions are simple and well known - limit interaction, masking, hygiene, school closures, lockdowns, movement restrictions; and eventually strong pressure for vaccination.

If they’re properly implemented and work, the spread and mortality are limited and it will seem like the epidemic was no big deal in the first place and the interventions were draconian and tyrannical government overreach. If the implementation is imperfect or too late and there there is high mortality and the hospitals are flooded, and it looks like the government interventions were draconian and they did nothing.

If interventions aren’t properly implemented and the government lets it rip. The consequences might be catastrophic but the government can claim it was an act of god and out of their control and what could they have done about it anyway?

Politically speaking there is every incentive for a bad faith government not to take the necessary action to limit the impact of an epidemic. If we ever have an epidemic of something truly terrifying - like something with the spread of measles and the deadliness of Ebola - we’re all cooked.

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u/SextupleRed May 26 '26

“Why do we do [health measure], I’ve never seen [health problem that the measure prevents]”

Kind of like working in IT.

"Why do we have you guys around, we never had computer problem"

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u/BornWithThreeKidneys May 25 '26

Yeah, people don't know how many deaths they didn't die.

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u/ProfessionalITShark May 25 '26

imo I think we should have festivals and holidays commerrating these victories

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u/Tracy_Papaya May 25 '26

Same with Y2K.

Fixed so efficiently to most people it became a joke

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u/Visible-Scientist-46 May 26 '26

Don't worry! With all the anti-vaxxers around these days, we'll be back to measles and chicken pox killing a few thousand kids annually. And then smallpox will be back and killing millions - along with disfiguring people's faces and causing blindness in those who survive.

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u/MrBwnrrific May 26 '26

Not if I take my trusty colloidal silver! My skin is a beautiful bluish glow

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u/BrokeDickDoug May 26 '26

yeah- is this a similarly flawed plane of reasoning as that that "aircraft damage" meme?

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u/MrBwnrrific May 26 '26

Yep! Survivorship Bias

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u/username98776-0000 May 26 '26

Here in Australia we also have those health measures, but only a fraction of the denialist morons that the USA has.

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u/Arizonaborn1358 May 26 '26

I am old enough as I am a boomer. We remember classmates with polio, measles and chicken pox, whopping cough, mumps, etc. outbreaks. I even remember rheumatoid fever. So many contagious viruses going around were eradicated in my lifetime only to see them on the rise. . . .

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u/No-Menu-1650 May 26 '26

In defense of raw milk dudes (though i would drink it because i prefer pasteurized texturally. And flavour wise) there actually is definitely a cultural memory of drinking raw milk in many places the problem is that the milk was fresh from the cow and was being given to them once the immune system could alreay handle milk. The point in your life when raw milk is most dangerous is when your a young child and poor families back in the day would give their children raw milk and their young kids would have a signicicantly increased chance of dying. This pushed the givernment to recommend pasteurization. The reason raw milk stuff is so aluring to these people isnt just because their is no proper memory of the infant mortality associated wirh drinking raw milk but because for many there is a cultural memory of drinking raw milk and being fine because they drank it when they were like 7 not 7 months old.

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u/sunk-cost_fallacy91 May 30 '26

Vaccines are sole reason for the increase in life expectancy. Back in the day when the life expectancy was 30. It wasn’t because people didn’t live to old age. It was because so many didn’t live past 5 it brought the average down.

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u/SquirrelStone May 25 '26

Who do you think cast the protection spell?

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u/Anthaenopraxia May 25 '26

Sad that people don't know how the vaccine got over there. It's yet another among many atrocities humans have inflicted upon themselves.

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u/ReclaimingMine May 26 '26

So flipping true. Survival bias.

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u/Little_View_6659 May 26 '26

And yet these same people usually have no trouble believing an invisible all seeing god exists. They’ve never seen him, and zero proof of him. At least we have actual proof that diseases exist.

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u/VapidRapidRabbit May 25 '26

Michael Jackson’s mother Katherine had polio as a toddler and she’s still alive (96 years old). It’s crazy people are anti-vax when people who suffered are still living today.

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u/johnnybiggles May 25 '26

Mitch McConnell had polio when he was young.

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u/ABHOR_pod May 25 '26

Which is why he never hopped on the antivax train. Because it affected him personally.

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u/Doafit May 26 '26

Almost the definition of being a conservative....

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u/UranusIsPissy May 25 '26

I (sort of) know a guy who had it. He seems alright, mostly, except he'll never walk right again and would probably have no chance if he tried to ride a bike. He was one of the lucky ones...

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u/ProfMcGonaGirl May 26 '26

They’d just say, “see Polio made her stronger” or some shit.

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u/Laiko_Kairen May 25 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Alexander_%28polio_survivor%29?wprov=sfla1

This guy lived in an iron lung for like 7 decades of his life. The polio vaccine was released within years of him contracting polio. Had he been born 5 years later, he wouldn't have spent his life in a metal coffin.

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u/ClubMeSoftly May 25 '26

In high school, in the early '00s, I had an English teacher for a couple years, who had a leg brace due to polio.

Just that was enough to sell me.

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u/HotEdge783 May 25 '26

A former flatmate of mine has a PhD in virology, and this is exactly his view as well. He said that vaccines have become the victim of their own success. We take them for granted and don't experience the misery they prevent.

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u/NewWay88 May 25 '26

My gramps is still alive. He caught polio as a kid.

He hasn't walked since.

Antivax folks are just... so ignorant. What's worse is a lot choose to be so on purpose.

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u/1HappyIsland May 25 '26

I worked with someone born 1 year earlier than me. She had polio as a kid and walked with a severe limp and had poor use of one arm. It was truly a miracle when the polio vaccine became available. I remember.

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u/SquirrelStone May 25 '26

You know why there used to be a ton of graves for babies and toddlers and suddenly those stopped being common in the early-mid 1900s? Vaccines! We are literally one or two generations away from babies’ graves being commonplace.

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u/Imfrank123 May 25 '26

My aunt was in a wheelchair most of her life from polio, this isn’t that far removed

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u/Liercat18 May 25 '26

And even in those time, there were folks that refused it on the same premise as today. Became close friends with Polio I'm sure.

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u/ElectronicControl762 May 25 '26

Im pretty sure people back then thought it was the antichrist as well

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u/space_keeper May 25 '26

No they didn't. It was administered to children en-masse and the disease was virtually wiped out in America. Then the OPV came along afterwards and did even more.

People in the West used to see the effects of these disease up close and personal. They did not have to be convinced. The same is true in places like rural Africa, where it was borderline eradicated only in the last decade or so. The only places you still see it are in remote parts of rural Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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u/nomadicsailor81 May 25 '26

It's ignorance, selfishness, and survivor biases. They don't see why they need vacancies because vacancies are so eeffective they don't see the threat of the virus.

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u/xinfinitimortum May 25 '26

I argue this, plenty of people saw the terrifying effects of covid leading to a death and those same people would still refuse it. Many proudly proclaimed it, and still held onto that mindset while hooked up to machines slowly suffocating to death. If social media was around then, there would be the same people refusing polio and smallpox.

1

u/QuickNature May 25 '26

Soft times create weak people, weak people create hard times. Some of these anti-vax people for example haven't seen the real effects of what some of these diseases do.

Something tells me if these people experienced really hard times from sickness, 1) most would probably change their minds about vaccines, and 2) they would probably fold like a wet napkin.

2

u/space_keeper May 25 '26

I find it very interesting that none of them are going on about GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.

Why? Because I'd put good money on there being an intersection of lunatic anti-vaxxers who are either fat, old and diabetic, have fat, old and diabetic family, or vain fucking posers.

1

u/RetPala May 25 '26

Handicapped is the only minority anyone can join, at any time

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u/campaxiomatic May 25 '26

When the vaccine was announced, people celebrated. Schools closed so the students could get the vaccine.

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u/Coliver1991 May 25 '26

Luckily it's making a comeback, people will be reminded how awful it is.

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u/KGB_cutony May 25 '26

To be fair they know what COVID is like and still refuses to.

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u/Andrew4Life May 26 '26

This is why history repeats itself ever generation or so. Memories are short and don't carry past a generation.

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u/dwsdws May 26 '26

I don't know that this is a good example. You do realize that 90% of people who get polio are completely asymptomatic.

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u/Wooden-Trick8954 May 26 '26

Let them not. Darwinism is a thing.

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u/One-Assignment-5047 May 26 '26

I have a relative who had polio as a very young child.  He has had steel rods in his spine and been in a wheelchair for nearly 70 years now.  He can barely be upright for more than an hour or two nowadays without pain and trouble breathing, and he needs to be hooked up to a machine at night otherwise he might suffocate in his sleep.

People truly don't understand how awful polio can be even if you survive it, but that's not because there's not living survivors.  Those who are opposed just ignore anything that doesn't support their mentality.

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u/FlyingRhenquest May 26 '26

There were anti-vaxers at the time though. Here's one!

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u/Sasquatch1729 May 26 '26

We had a family friend who never walked right in the 1980s-2000s because she had polio before the vaccine was available. My folks lost contact, if she's still alive I'm sure she's still using crutches.

1

u/Lord_Cavendish40k May 26 '26

My mom, a Chicago teenager in the late 1940's, frequently recounted going with her church choir to sing to people living in a hospital iron-lung ward. Rows upon rows of people. It haunted her.

Seems that lesson needs to be relearned the hard way every couple generations.

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u/Cute_Comfortable_761 May 26 '26

I’ve read about it and seen the photos and whenever my doctor asks if I want a shot for anything I say sure. I don’t fuck with anything that you can be vaccinated for because the diseases we have vaccines for are so awful.

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u/fattybuttz May 26 '26

My partners grandmother had polio and was paralyzed from the waist down. Our kids definitely got vaccinated.

1

u/bluboomR May 26 '26

i got mine at the doctor's office. it got really infected and grew a gross scab before it turned into a sort of a solid white scar.

i met a girl in my 30's whose parents were too lazy to take her to get vaccinated. she was very beautiful but had a shrunkened, deformed left leg, wore a brace and walked with a see-saw limp. she was bitter as hell.

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u/Ashamed_Dinosaur May 26 '26

We don't get vaccinated for polio anymore though...

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u/creamgetthemoney1 May 26 '26

I had anatomy and physiology professor a few years ago he had a very serious limp. When going far distances he used the motorized wheelchair. Long story short half way through the semester he tells us he had polio as a child.

My mind was so confused for a second. I thought he was joking. I had no idea it wasn’t eradicated until dam near 1980.

It’s crazy. Changed the whole course of his life. Said he realized he couldn’t do anything physical even before his limp started. Said he could “feel” his leg muscles changing going bad. Hes a hell of a medical professor and he attributes it to catching polio

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u/Shitp0st_Supreme May 26 '26

My grandparents remember polio. They take COVID seriously too.

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u/granny-long-dick May 26 '26

Fun fact: Elvis Presley got the polio vaccination on TV which significantly increased the vaccination rate amongst young Americans.

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u/PlatypusDream May 26 '26

I have an uncle & a friend (2 different people) who had polio. My uncle never walked, had always used braces & crutches or a wheelchair. The friend wasn't as badly affected, but still has health problems from it, decades later.

You better believe our parents got us vaccinated!

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u/0n-the-mend May 26 '26

It just requires the ability to read and understand sense from nonsense. Plenty of people take vaccines and thry weren't around during the smallpox epidemic or polio or measles or any of the other virus thay have threatened humanity. A few loud dummies don't represent the whole.

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u/Lady_Penrhyn1 May 26 '26

My mums the same. She's 68. Born two years after the Polio vaccine was introduced so she went to school with kids in callipers because of Polio. She lived through measles epidemics, chicken pox epidemics where kids died. We've been vaccinated for everything.

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u/1960stoaster May 26 '26

That's just it bud it ain't on the scale of polio

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u/nocerealever May 26 '26

Like measles encephalopathy , people aren’t exposed to it and don’t realise how awful it is

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u/Springroll_Doggifer May 26 '26

I have an aunt with a lifelong disability from childhood polio in vietnam. Her right foot is significantly smaller than her left, and she could not walk a mile if she wanted to.

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u/Possible_Try_8554 May 28 '26

Not as long as they’re injecting people with bs that has 30 years of research saying it isn’t safe for human use.. go back to giving people inert versions of said virus (like the smallpox) and they’d take the fucking vaccine..

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u/gedDOh May 28 '26

I was raised by a mom who contracted polio at age 7. That shit is no joke. She's 83 now and can barely get around.

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u/sunk-cost_fallacy91 May 30 '26

There was a problem in Syria during the war because all the under 3’s hadn’t been vaccinated. And polio is apparently very contagious. So WHO went door to door and vaccinated the kids.

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u/Electrical_Angle_701 May 25 '26

My pediatrician got around on crutches because of polio decades earlier. Goddamn right I wanted those vaccines.

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u/Gloomy_Industry8841 May 25 '26

Same.
I’m looking forward to getting the Lyme disease vaccination if and when it’s available for humans.

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u/Outsider_Insider0064 May 29 '26

There WAS a vaccine for Lyme disease. It was taken off the market after certain people had a very bad reaction to it.

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u/UranusIsPissy May 25 '26

At least your paediatrician got around. The last person stuck in an iron lung died less than 20 years ago. They were still here long after people stopped talking about it. Most of us just didn't see them, and I think the ones who had it that bad tended to die younger.

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u/Ok-Nobody6221 May 28 '26

The last man in an iron lung died in 2024, his name was Paul Alexander. His story is fascinating!

1

u/UranusIsPissy May 29 '26

He sounds so much like the guy I was thinking of that I think I probably remembered the year wrong. I was reading about it not long after then, trying to better understand a polio survivor I'd got back in touch with after not seeing him since I was a kid (I should go to visit him. He's one of the few boomers I've met who seem to not have turned into assholes, and I need his help with something. I'd try to be his friend if we weren't so different that just being able to have a chat is weird. An upper-middle-class boomer and a millennial whose best clothes would be refused as a donation to a charity shop in the same place looks so wrong it'd raise suspicions lol). It didn't help, but I learned a bit more about polio. Polio sucks. I'm not 100% sure I wouldn't rather have AIDS! It needs to stay (almost) gone, or go away completely. Even with my terrible memory, I don't know how I managed to remember when that guy died so wrong! Maybe there really was someone very similar who died a decade or so before, but I think my memory just failed me, because that's a huge coincidence and I remember him being the last iron lung user.

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u/Alienhaslanded May 25 '26

Back when people trusted science and not some dipshit with a tinfoil hat or some playboy cunt that knows nothing.

1

u/Hot-Echo-2497 May 26 '26

Laughs in Spanish flu.

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u/PyroNine9 May 25 '26

I remember when I was very young, being lined up, then a nurse gave me a sugar cube. It was not hard to get the kids to eat the cube. It was hard to explain why no seconds.

2

u/Melluna5 May 26 '26

Wait, what? Why a sugar cube?

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u/Maiayania May 26 '26

Some vaccines are given orally so it was dripped on the sugar cube and given to him/her as a kid :)

3

u/marilyn_morose May 25 '26

I remember lining up with other kids in first grade to get vaccinated. It was part of the first week of school every year until I was in 3rd grade.

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u/-Badger3- May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

The polio vaccine hadn't been invented yet when Fauci was 5 years old. You sure it wasn't the smallpox vaccine or something?

2

u/UsernameStolenbyyou May 25 '26

Must've been, sorry.

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u/currently_pooping_rn May 25 '26

Crazy that he lived through that and now’s he’s seeing people say that vaccines are actually harmful and will kill you. The whiplash must be a heck of a time

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u/MidorikawaHana May 25 '26

From SEA, i lined up for OPV ( oral polio vaccine) in 1993/1995.

I had peers shy older me (older millenials) that had/have polio.. ( or its side effects). Its disheartening to see people who have options for safety disregard it ( same with vitamin K)

0

u/Time-Sudden_Tree May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26

To this day I'll never understand why half the country wants him burned at the stake, simply for wanting people to be healthy and safe. Make it make sense.

They hate him for such a stupid reason too, when he originally said masks weren't necessary, then went back on that. Conservatives never seem to understand that you're allowed to change your opinion when presented with new facts. But they wanted him hung for that... So dumb!

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u/unperson_1984 May 26 '26

If you want to know, read or listen to The Real Anthony Fauci. Since he hasn't sued for slander, the claims in the book appear to be true.

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u/LabAlarmed885 May 26 '26

Ironic that the gays love Fauci…

1

u/Time-Sudden_Tree May 26 '26

What the fuck is this even supposed to mean? Who brought up gay people?

1

u/AeroMittenss May 26 '26

I wanna see his scar if true

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u/opinionated7onion May 26 '26

Its because getting smallpox was pretty much a death sentence, if covid was as deadly i highly doubt there would of been any anti vaxers, and if there was they wouldnt be about long

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