In the time before widespread #vaccination, #death often came early.
Devastating infectious diseases ran rampant in America, killing millions of #children & leaving others w/lifelong #health problems. These illnesses were the main reason why nearly 1 in 5 children in 1900 never made it to their 5th birthday.
#Trump #RFKJr #PublicHealth #USpol #policy #science #medicine #vaccines #ConspiracyTheories #AntiVax #eugenics
https://apnews.com/article/vaccines-measles-polio-whooping-cough-rubella-af4cd1aef8f408a960601df6372f9c32?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=2025-06-28-Lessons+unlearned
Over the next century, #vaccines virtually wiped out long-feared scourges like #polio & #measles & drastically reduced the toll of many others. Today, however, some preventable, #ContagiousDiseases are making a comeback as #VaccineHesitancy pushes #immunization rates down. And well-established vaccines are facing suspicion even from *public officials*, w/ #RFKJr, a longtime #AntiVaccine activist, running the federal #health dept, #HHS.
“This concern, this hesitancy, these questions about #vaccines are a consequence of the great success of the vaccines – because they eliminated the #diseases,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an #InfectiousDisease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “If you’re not familiar with the disease, you don’t respect or even fear it. And therefore you don’t value the #vaccine.”
#Trump #RFKJr #PublicHealth #USpol #policy #science #medicine #ConspiracyTheories #AntiVax #eugenics
…Some Americans know the reality of these #preventable #diseases all too well. For them, news of #measles outbreaks & rising #WhoopingCough cases brings back terrible memories of lives forever changed – & a longing to spare others from similar pain.
[I can speak to this personally. The Spanish Influenza (which BTWs did not originate in Spain — much like #Trump labeled #COVID “the China virus”) orphaned my grandmother as a toddler killing both her parents & her baby sister.]
