Talk to anyone who lived through the 1950s and they’ll remember when schools shut down for polio outbreaks and families lived in fear of measles, mumps, and diphtheria sweeping through neighborhoods. During evening prayers, they asked for protection for their family.

This wasn’t hysteria. It was reality:

Before the polio vaccine was licensed in 1955, tens of thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands of people had some sort of permanent paralysis.

The United States suffered a German measles (rubella) outbreak between 1964 and 1965 and while not a death sentence, more than 12.5 million people got Rubella. In fact, some 11,000 pregnant women suffered miscarriages, more than 2,000 newborn babies died and there were a reported 20,000 babies born with cataracts, heart complications o

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