Thinking about my maternal grandfather, who was largely distrustful of doctors. But when I asked him about his smallpox vaccine scar and why he did it, he got very serious and said “If they make a vaccine, you take it. The alternative is always worse.”

I'm 63, and my mother was blind in one eye from Rubella. I've gotten every vaccine I can get.

My father grew up at a time before the polio vaccine was readily available. His school was on a hill; across the valley, visible from the school, was the sanitarium. The possibility that you'd leave one for the other (and perhaps never return) was indelibly etched on those kids. He is very pro-vax.

He was a massive asshole who abused my mom, uncle, and grandma, but his vocal support of vaccines and labor unions are the lessons he passed on that stuck.

Still shakes me to my core every day to know that 50 years before *all this* we eradicated a disease forever by vaccinating literally everyone we possibly could. Make it make sense.