Need a reminder of just how serious vaccine preventable diseases can be?
Don’t remember the pre-vaccine era?
That could be why some folks are so quick to think that skipping or delaying vaccines is a safe option for their kids.
Vaccines are necessary.
Without them, we will see even more outbreaks of measles, mumps, and pertussis and kids will continue to die of rabies, tetanus, and other now vaccine-preventable diseases.
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We should never forget what life was like before vaccines.
We should know that vaccine-preventable diseases were rarely mild, natural immunity comes at a cost, and that those who died from smallpox, diphtheria, measles, and polio aren’t around to talk about their experiences on Facebook (survivorship bias).
We should never forget that vaccine-preventable diseases were once big killers, and the only reason some folks have grown to fear the side effects of vaccines more than the diseases they prevent, is because we don’t see those diseases very much any more. If more people skip or delay getting vaccinated, we will though.

Vaccines are safe and vaccines work.
Get vaccinated and protected.
Outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases belong in the past.
What to Know About Life Before Vaccines
Forgetting the pre-vaccine era and the benefits of vaccines makes folks susceptible to anti-vaccine talking points and scares them away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.
More on Remembering Life Before Vaccines
- Isolated Reminders Of Old Epidemics
- Hunting for Homesteads
- Lessons from a Kansas graveyard: What a 1903 outbreak of diphtheria can teach us today
- The Billerbeck or Diphtheria Cemetery
- Nebraska’s Central City Cemetery: The “Dread Scourge” of 1882, Part II
- A Sad Tale of the 1895 Smallpox Outbreak
- Farmington’s Hospital Rock Dates Back to 18th-Century Smallpox Inoculation
- Remembering The Pre-Vaccine Era: The Diseases of Childhood
- Study – Rubella—Some Comments on the 1964-65 Epidemic in California
- Polio Vaccine reaches Miami
- Photos of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases
- Immunization Action Coalition Photo Library
- Current Management of Upper Airway Obstruction
- Vaccine Refusals Fueled California’s Whooping Cough Epidemic
- Study – Nonmedical Vaccine Exemptions and Pertussis in California, 2010
- CDC – What Would Happen If We Stopped Vaccinations?
- Physician Remembers the Tragedies of Vaccine-Preventable Disease
- Pre-Vaccine Declines in Measles Mortality
- The Chicken Pox Story
- The intellectual dishonesty of the “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit