Not Exactly a Midlife Crisis
What vaccine is next?
I am at the right age to have a midlife crisis, but I never had one. I always enjoyed every stage of life and tried to make the best of it. Writing about my past adventures also fits into that. I was able to see what I learned from my travels and studies in the past.
Lately, however, I feel as if I were back in some childhood phase. I had my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine today, and shringrix is next in two weeks. Yeah! I can’t wait. Then another dose of shingrix in two to six months, and now my older friends tell me to sign up for the pneumonia vaccine as soon as I can.
How many vaccines do I need? As a child, I got the smallpox vaccine and my sugar cube with the polio vaccine. I still remember the slogan on TV to get parents to vaccinate their children: Schluckimpfung ist süß. Kinderlähmung is grausam. (The oral vaccine is sweet. Polio is cruel.) Then there would be a child on crutches.
In the picture from 1960 below, children are receiving the polio vaccine.
Yes, even faced with such a serious disease, some parents were reluctant to vaccinate their children just as today some people refuse the COVID-19 vaccine.
I did not get any other vaccines then. They were not available. I had measles, mumps, rubella, and other childhood diseases and have enough unpleasant (albeit vague) memories of them I cannot understand parents who refuse the MMR vaccine for their children or the COVID-19 vaccine for themselves.
One acquaintance remarked that “the vaccine would lower his body’s immunity.” Don’t people know how vaccines work??
I am ready to get any vaccine that seems necessary or useful, but until recently, I did not know that I would have to get more of them than I had as a child. So I will endure two doses of shingrix and look into the pneumonia vaccine as well. Now we hear that the COVID-19 vaccines will be ineffective soon.
It seems like we will need more vaccines and boosters in the future. I will get them all. Better safe than sorry!
