In California in the 1950s when we came here from Seattle in 1952 first to San Diego I never had to get even one vaccine and from birth I never had even one vaccine of any kind, not for polio or whooping cough or anything else then in California.
At that time you could refuse any vaccine in California for religious reasons as people were very religious then (maybe 80% of the people then were religious and went to church mostly Christian and we were no exception in those days.
So, as a direct result of this I got whooping cough (which I almost died from) and then I got chicken pox which made me pretty sick too but I never got measles or mumps or anything like that.
My first shot of ANY kind was a Tetanus shot which was legally required in Glendale when an old blind dog bit my hand on a job i was working on with my father when I was about 15 years old. I didn't receive any other shots until I was 37 and wanted to travel to India and Nepal and Thailand and Japan.
However, I didn't get a whooping cough shot for my son either because of the precedences of my life already and then he got whooping cough like I had too and I felt really bad about it because he got really sick like I had too.
After that experience when my next two daughters were born I made sure they at least got whooping cough shots so they wouldn't get whooping cough too like my son and I had.
What I'm trying to get at here is that though I understand why people aren't getting vaccinated, the problem is this time it could be fatal not getting vaccinated like it almost was for my son and I with whooping cough.
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