Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers. You Just Brought Back Measles in NYC.

[Hekate]

203. Public Health is all about the numbers, HockeyMom. I applaud your vigor, but not everyone is you.

Public Health policies and practices are all about the vast majorities of other human beings, and how to protect them, and how to prevent epidemics. As I've said many times before, old graveyards are chock full of tiny graves.

For the harsh reality, there's nothing like the book Mrs. Mike (Benedict and Nancy Freedman), published about 1947 and often reprinted since. A novelized biography set a century ago in Calgary, it's really lovely -- love, marriage, landscape. The scene that pierced my heart and stayed forever, though, was Katherine's stroll by the graveyard with a new friend, who pointed to a cluster of graves and said, "That's my first family." Epidemics of diphtheria and such would sweep through, and there were couples who just had to start all over again. So did Mrs. Mike, eventually.

You can also read Mark Twain -- he's got a scene in Connecticut Yankee, I think, of a child sick with the membranous croup (diphtheria), and you know he was calling on his own experiences. Dickens is another who can rip your heart out; little Joe dying of smallpox in Bleak House, for instance. These people knew things we can only imagine, thank God, but disease is cunning and bides its time in small reservoirs.

As for the flu, LOL. As a young person I only got it on average every 5 years. Somewhere after 50 I got the flu, then got bronchitis, then got pneumonia. I figured my lucky days were on the wane, and since then I've made a point of getting the shots. Maybe you're luck will hold forever, but probably not.