OK, I’ll consider it next time we enter the season 
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Unfortunately, some problems that look like knowledge problems are actually of some other flavor(the easiest way to tell is when adding knowledge does absolutely nothing except leave you doing the same thing with the awareness that you are screwing it up).
It’s not a terribly novel observation, even Plato had to (unconvincingly) deny 'akrasia’ for the Socratic ‘to know the good is to do the good’ optimism party; but let’s just say that we have very, very little to show for several millennia of work on the problem.
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None of your objections here are anti-vaxx type, “so this is why I don’t need vaccinations” arguments (of the cartoon.) They are the exceptions that show why 1-2 percent of the population isn’t vaccinated in the best of times.
As the mother of two children with special needs, I appreciate the difficulties that you are experiencing. That said, it sounds like whether or not you are immunized is probably the least of your problems here. Rather than arguing with people on the internet about organizational skills, it seems like it would be a better use of your time to advocate for yourself and look for help from a family member, friend, social worker, etc. to help you do some of these basic living tasks you are unprepared to deal with yourself.
If you can’t get to a doctor to have a vaccine titre you’re probably not going to die. If you can’t get to a doctor ever because PTSD, sensory issues, anxiety, and such are having that much of an effect on your life, the chances of an early death go up considerably. I hope you get the support that you need.
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I used to be like this until my doctor and I talked about it. He had recently gotten the flu because he didn’t vaccinate either (he saved his dose for the elderly). And it basically sidelined him out of work for a month unable to do much except sleep 14 hours a day and hate the parts where he wasn’t sleeping. He went into detail. It sounded unpleasant, and he’s not one to try to scare me to do anything, it was just so, conversational.
I get that thing every year now. It literally costs nothing and can only help.
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Has anyone else been following the Toronto Star vaccination scary story kerfuffle?
Ben Goldacre’s response was particularly fun.
As far as records go, I had to have pretty much everything redone for my green card. No idea if my parents have any record of the original ones anyway.
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I would generally go for:
- If you’re an adult, and your parents weren’t hippies on a commune or completely dysfunctional, you probably had all the major vaccinations
- If you’re a child growing up now, most of these things are in your electronic medical records, so you don’t need to organize the scattered papers in your basement
I don’t have all the records from when I was a child – my pediatrician’s office burnt down. But I don’t worry about it. I get the adult booster shots I need, and assume I got everything else.
The only thing I worried about was chickenpox, for which the vaccination didn’t exist when we were kids, and I never had any symptoms as a child. Since this can be dangerous to have as an adult, I asked my doctor and he tested my blood for my immunity, and confirmed that I must have had it, even if I wasn’t symptomatic.
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One thing you should definitely check: have you had a recent tetanus shot? The last few years, they’ve also had a pertussis booster. Pertussis is now pretty common and, if you only had the childhood vaccine, you are unlikely to remain immune. Pertussis is pretty unpleasant, even for adults.
Also potentially worth checking: as a person who got the small pox vaccine, you’re maybe old enough to have had the inactivated measles vaccine. People at the tail end of small pox vaccination may have been missed in the change to the current vaccination schedule.
Bad record-keeping led me to get extra MMR vaccines, which apparently isn’t a big deal.
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my parents were completely dysfunctional and i still had the major vaccinations thanks to the nanny state literally holding doctors at gunpoint and forcing them, for the good of society, to degrade their very humanity. Nay, not their humanity, but Reason itself! 
i actually have no freaking idea how i managed to find the record of them for grad school, but i certainly couldn’t do it now; not least because the only possible holder of these records is now dead. i mean, i guess i could cold call every free pediatric clinic in my hometown.
but yeah, i had chickenpox and i have a real job now, so no biggie.
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How many people from the period when one still got small-pox vaccines really have accurate records? The first problem is that most the burden was on one’s parents. If they didn’t do a good job, that’s pretty much all you can say. My records went on the old “yellow card,” and have obvious gaps. But those were the days of line-em-up-and-shoot-em in school, and just about everyone I know lost track of some of those.
The important thing is to encourage people to be conscientious now. That means being aware of what one’s age cohort might have missed and knowing what the current booster requirements are.
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Because my genetics were coded with non-standard, non-organic base pairs? So I am not susceptible to naturally-ocurring viruses.
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I never had the smallpox vaccine. I caught the smallpox vaccine in late 2002. I don’t know how. I later found out the the police and military were being vaccinated, and I think I may have had airborne exposure while protesting against the upcoming war, but I can’t think of any other source. I have sensitive skin, and had severe rashes, and at first I thought the rashes were just acting up another weird way.
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Lucky you. I got them for deployments just like I got them for being at home. The USAF never seemed to shy away from giving us shots for one thing or another, regardless of FDA approval.
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Sorry, for my mistaken inference about your having been given the smallpox vaccine. I think I now remember having seen you or someone in a similar situation write about the experience and thinking that bringing the old smallpox vaccine out of retirement must have been the result of some pretty poor risk analysis. That was one primitive vaccine: contagious to others and dangerous for people various conditions. Also, if I recall correctly, the one vaccine that really did cause encephalitis regularly. Jenner is a hero to me, but if modern vaccines were like that, I’d be much more sympathetic to the anti-vaccine types.
It’s still worth pointing out to anyone who happens to be reading that the cohort at the tail end of the smallpox vaccination era were in a somewhat messed up era for measles and mumps vaccine schedules.
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I think it’s a lot easier to maintain records if your family got them in the first place, kept track of them and gave them to you when you became an adult, after which you did not move very often once getting those records, your name and/or gender never changed, you have been to only one or maybe two doctors in your life, your doctor either is still in practice and/or the records are stored somewhere accessible, and no fires occurred anywhere.
In other words, I don’t think the people who have maintained perfect medical records for themselves are in the majority.
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I just got done with something that could easily be described as the flu. It was extremely unpleasant, kept me down for the entire weekend and missed an additional two days of work. My appetite still isn’t completely back yet. I did get the flu vaccine this year, but it seems to have been a mismatch for the strains that were string this season. I will happily continue getting the vaccine every season going forward if it can reduce my chances of this happening again by even a little bit.
Also worth pointing out that the main reason people don’t have to get a smallpox vaccine anymore is because universal vaccination WORKED and we actually eradicated the disease from the planet. It would be great to put a few more vaccines on the no-longer-needed list.
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In which case it really doesn’t matter if you’re vaccinated or not, since it seems that you can’t or won’t do anything about either using the records you have to figure it out or starting from first principles to determine your status.
That sounds like a particularly amusing form of woo. Was your father a rock, and your mother a lump of clay? 
Wait a sec … are you … Eve?!
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The best part about the strip is decision to not rely on stereotypes. Good job.
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