Get vaccinated

To the Editor:

I have heard that 90% of the Continental Army's casualties were caused by disease, and that is why General George Washington ordered smallpox vaccines for all his troops. As Americans moved west, smallpox devastated the Native American population, killing hundreds of thousands. In 1905, the Supreme Court backed Massachusetts' requirement for smallpox vaccinations.

After their 3-year-old daughter died of an undisclosed disease, the Jones family migrated from Humansville, Missouri, to Nebraska. Had those states mandated vaccines as Massachusetts did, perhaps my mother would not have been born with smallpox in Wakefield? Not expected to live, her first crib was a shoe box, but she was a fighter. Later, it was discovered she was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and severely scarred in her lungs, face and body.

I remember being scared to get inoculated at 6 years old for smallpox before starting school. My mother took my little hands in hers and touched the deep pockmarks on her face, a face I had seen every day of my life never even noticing her disfigurement. She said, “I wear these glasses because I am blind in one eye and can't see well out of the other. You have to talk to me in my right ear because I can't hear out of my left ear. Please honey; take this vaccine now so you won't have to live with scars like these your whole life.”

I reluctantly took the vaccine and bear the scar to this day. However, neither of my sons have this scar and neither do my grandchildren. My mother lived long enough to witness the elimination of smallpox in the world population in 1985. She died a few years later of respiratory disease exacerbated by her scarred lungs. Old George was right, get vaccinated, prevent disease.

Jerry Snyder

Sonora