Vakkotaur

And everyone (or very nearly everyone) my age or older also has this mark. It's not the 'Mark of the Beast'. In fact, it's pretty much the exact opposite. It helped me, and so many others, avoid - at a minimum - far worse marking. Those somewhat younger than me generally do not have this mark. They don't have it, because they don't need it. They don't need because I, and so many others, have it. This mark is the one that came from getting a vaccination. You could say, the vaccination. The name vaccine itself came from this, or a very early version of it. It is perhaps the ultimate vaccination success story. It's also one thing the United Nations, through the World Health Organization, got right. You see, the last "in the wild" (not a lab accident) case was diagnosed in October 1977. In 1979 the WHO declared that smallpox had been eradicated. This was the first time, ever, that a disease had been considered eradicated.

Since then there has been only one other such success, so far: rinderpest, a disease of cattle that was declared eradicated in 2011. There had been hopes that polio (and perhaps measles) would join them. It hasn't yet. War and paranoia have prevented the last phase of vaccinations from happening, so instead of zero cases cases yearly worldwide, there are over 200. That sounds good, if you think about the time when cases were in the thousands or millions, but it's bad if you want to truly wipe out the disease so you can stop worrying about it at all.

Smallpox vaccine actually was relatively dangerous. It had some nasty potential side-effects. And it was not 100% effective. By the time I got it, it was pretty good, however, having reached about 95% effectiveness. And that last 5%? A thing called 'herd immunity' - if enough of a population is resistant to a disease, even if an unfortunate individual comes down with it, it can't spread. Thus while the last 5% aren't perfectly protected, they have a sort of immunity by a kind of automatic quarantine.

The polio vaccine was so effective it astonished the researchers. It also is not perfect, but is well beyond being merely "good enough." There are other vaccines, for other diseases. While I've never met anyone (as far as I know) who had smallpox, I have met people who survived polio. There are vaccines now for more minor illnesses, some of which I've had and even though they were mild and "minor" (and minor is relative - they aren't harmless, they just cause permanent disability and death less often than the Big Bad ones like smallpox.) I would have been quite happy to have traded a needle-stick for the affliction itself.

It irritates me greatly to see that there are still people with the mistaken (at best - all too often it's more outright crazy) belief that vaccines are inherently dangerous. The claim has been around since the very first vaccinations (and in truth the very first really were a gamble - but it's not 1796 and more than a little progress has been since then). Nowadays the claim often centers on thimerisal - a mercury compound once used as an antiseptic and antifungal agent in vaccines (to prevent the vaccine from causing another illness), and accused of contributing to autism. Certainly, exposure to heavy metals is best avoided, but the evidence for thimerisal doing anything beyond the intended preservation is simply not there. Autism rates increased after thimerisal use ended or was at least greatly reduced (The USA stopped using thimerisal in all but a very few vaccines and antivenoms in 1999.). That doesn't mean that thimerisal protects against autism; it indicates something else is going on. The "study" that showed the MMR vaccine (and thimerisal) had a link to autism was not only never replicated, but was debunked, retracted by the medical publication that first published it, the originator found to have several conflicts of interest which he hadn't revealed, and that person is no longer permitted to practice medicine. In short: QUACK! The whole thing was a scam, setting himself up to profit. Ponder that one. This crook was willing to knowingly misdiagnose a cause of an affliction, and have others risk illness for his personal profit. There is a word for that behavior: Criminal.

So now, gullible and panicky people looking for something to blame, erroneously blame vaccines and thereby cause a different problem. Remember that herd immunity? It doesn't work if the immunity rate (and immunity is conferred by vaccine) falls too low. When that happens, the unlucky individual who contracts an illness can and does come into contact with another susceptible person, and then that one can carry it to the next, and so on. The result is an outbreak of a disease that was rare for a while. Thus nowadays, thanks to this ignorance of the facts, and the stupidity of continuing to ignore them when clear and obvious evidence is presented, there are more and more cases of measles, and whooping cough, and who know what else might be next.

"Those are just childhood diseases." some say. Adults can and do get them. And often they are far nastier for and to adults - and I can tell you that when I was kid and had some of the "childhood diseases" that they were no fun at all - and I was fortunate to experience milder (relatively) cases. These diseases can still maim and kill. We have a good, effective tool to not only avoid such outcomes, but to avoid the affliction itself. The current vaccines are all much, much safer than even the safest version of the smallpox vaccine - it was a big relief to everyone when it could be set aside. Polio and perhaps measles can, if people come to their senses, also go the way of smallpox (there is no known non-human carrier of either) - and that will mean two less vaccines needed, without risk of outbreak.

I have this mark on my arm. If you don't, you're welcome.

Today is World AIDS Day and you may make of that what you will. I did know someone afflicted with AIDS. A few years ago, he died of it, or if you prefer, of the secondary infections that AIDS makes possible.

This person was Dr. Paul E. Gray, a professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville. He was happily married, definitely heterosexual, and monogamous - it would have been difficult to keep things a secret in the small town of Platteville, WI had they been otherwise. He certainly was not using illicit drugs, either.

The common stereotypes about people with AIDS do not apply. So what happened? How did Dr. Gray get the disease? His physicians gave it to him. Inadvertently and unknowingly, but that's about as good a description as any.

See, Dr. Gray did take some medication, prescribed to keep him alive, and it worked. But what Dr. Gray suffered from was a blood disease, hemophilia. He needed blood products to counter the hemophilia and before there was any test at all for HIV there was still HIV in the blood supply.

When I hear "AIDS victim" or "AIDS patient" I don't think of the stereotypes flung about thoughtlessly. I think of Dr. Gray, whose medication was contaminated by a virus nobody knew about at the time. And when I see, "AIDS is punishment from God!" well, I don't have a very high opinion of those who claim that, or their version of a god.

Someone with Lupus needed to try to explain a day in her life to someone not afflicted. Thus was born Spoon Theory. It's an interesting read and an understandable, if only approximate, explanation of how life is different for some. I suspect one or two folks reading this might find it useful and more will likely find it of interest, thus I bring it up.