not dying of preventable diseases is actually one of my favorite hobbies
Because smallpox used to kill about 30% of everyone who caught it. The successful vaccine program run by the world’s medical community means that no one will ever die of smallpox ever again.
Because rabies is 100% fatal without a vaccine. No one needs to die of rabies ever again. It is entirely preventable.
Because 1-2 in 1000 who get measles, die. Vaccines let us contain outbreaks or fully wipe them out. There is no specific treatment for the disease once you have it. Your immune system either wins or you die.
We like vaccines because vaccines save lives and raise our standard of living.
My mother, now in her 70s, talks about how her mother wept for joy when her children received the polio vaccine. Because she didn’t have to be afraid of polio anymore.
A 2019 study found that measles can cause “immune amnesia”, cutting your antibodies by 10%, up to almost 75%. Meaning, you’ve become that much more vulnerable to a whole slew of illnesses that you used to be protected from, and it doesn’t matter if you acquired the antibodies via a vaccine or recovering from an illnesses - they are gone. All those shots you got as a baby? The boosters you got through grade school and as an adult, including the annual flu shot? Guess what: measles most likely wiped your body’s immune memory of those and you’ll have to get them all. Over. Again.
This is one of those posts that always prompts me to remind folks- many of the vaccines you received as a child need adult boosters! It’s worth checking to make sure you’re up to date on these!
See I did not know this in my 20s, and I didn’t have health insurance so I never saw doctors.
As a result of this and goddamn antivaxxers I got whooping cough in goddamn 2010. Now, this is less dangerous than many things you will get vaccinated for if you stay on top of things. But I am dead serious when I tell you I broke one of my ribs from coughing too hard. Did you know that was a thing? Because I hadn’t till it happened to me, and friend it was not a good time.
Vaccines save lives. And they save you from other miserable things as well. Please check to see if you’re up to date.
Oh, no question you broke a rib from whooping cough. I’ve never had it, but I had a tremendous histamine cough after an allergy test and busted a rib doing that.
Whooping cough is always the vaccine I think of when people like, “Why are you into vaccines?”
Because when I was nine years old, Mrs. Evans, the fourth-grade teacher next door to my classroom, had to hold up her wrist if she wrote on the board for a sentence because she’d survived polio but had muscle weakness the rest of her life.
Because Mrs. Pangle, MY fourth-grade teacher, described in horrifying detail watching her little brother pull ropes of phlegm out of his throat because he had whooping cough.
Because diphtheria grows a membrane over your windpipe, and you die slowly from lack of oxygen.
Because measles can make you blind or deaf or give you immune amnesia.
Because chicken pox only shows up once if it’s a strong enough case. Otherwise, you can have multiple mild cases. My mother had 2 children and dealt with 8 cases of chicken pox.
Because a bad chest cold or flu can turn into pneumonia without a whole lot of effort and that shit hurts.
You have to be on top of the Whooping Cough one. Because if you let them, many places will give you the cheaper Tetanus only vaccine if you tell them you don’t have babies in your life. Don’t let them. Ask for the Tdap. Both because you never want to have Whopping Cough yourself and because you never know when you’re going to be handed a baby to watch for “just 15 minutes” by a parent who’s so stressed out and sleep deprived that anyone over the age of 15 and not currently playing with broken glass looks like a reasonable babysitter.
I saw a post talking about the starfleet pointy side burns and now I’m watching TNG and I CANT STOP SEEING THEM
you can never unsee the sideburns. also, when someone is a traitor or leaves starfleet (permanently or temporarily) the sideburns sometimes go away. tom paris didn’t have pointy sideburns when he was in the penal colony and valeris very noticeably has no sideburns at all
I giggle every time I think of The Bible of how to apply the sideburns/facial hair, the seriousness of the instructions….its a gift that keeps on giving
there’s…there’s a sideburns bible???
Bibles. Plural
Michael Westmore aka the makeup artist for a swath of Star Trek productions, produced numerous Sideburn Bible, aka The Bible, instructing the makeup artsis about how to apply fake hairs, the type of hair to use (crepe wool for preference), how best to integrate with the performers natural hair, when to touch up, when to use makeup vs hairs (as little as possible and only in extremis)…he took this shit seriously.
I forgot the illustrations
THANK YOU FOR THIS I AM LOSING MY MIND
William Shatner needed prosthetic sideburns for “Generations” after forgetting to grow them out before filming started.
One of the most fun character concepts that I’ve had that I’ve never been able to fit into anything is The Most Appropriate Socialite Lady. Nobody dislikes her, but she is, indeed, very Appropriate, always seeming to do everything precisely to social etiquette, even according to social rules that nobody else knew were a thing. If there is a protocol to how to behave or respond in any given situation, no matter how obscure or how long ago it was that this was written down in some Refined Society Etiquette Book, she’ll know it. So she is a bit old-fashioned sometimes, but not in a regressive way.
Every time there’s a situation where nobody actually knows what the right way to respond would be, they quietly glance at her, because either she knows exactly how to handle this, or if the situation truly is without precedent, her educated guess of what should be done must be the right one. Someone might even write it down for a future etiquette book, of how This Most Polite Well-Mannered Lady responded to this awkward situation.
She doesn’t judge people, and is never rude about people breaking Good Manner Rules on purpose (as pointing out someone doing so would be impolite), but the way she seems genuinely surprised and confused whenever someone breaks the protocol that nobody else might even been aware of makes people feel self-conscious or awkward sometimes. And she politely pretends to not notice that. She is very kind, very sweet, but also extremely Appropriate.
So even if this isn’t a Victorian style gentlemanly “fine ladies are fragile and must be sheltered from the world”-style society by default, people still feel the need to behave well and be on their best formal behaviour around her, not out of fear of judgement but because she genuinely is that way and nobody wants to upset her. And if someone who doesn’t give a shit about protocols upsets her on purpose by deliberately doing something that’s fucking rude, they’ll be discreetly moved to a different location before getting the shit beat out of them because fuck you for upsetting her.
The thing is, she’s actually just autistic as hell. She originally started reading up on social etiquette as a way of masking, but it became a special interest for her, and she isn’t just thrilled to teach you how to properly fold a napkin to help you better fit in to the Refined Society, but because she fucking loves infodumping. She’s not trying to set herself apart, gatekeep, judge others or show off how she’s better than you (like many others of her background would), she just genuinely enjoys having explicitly and clearly written rules and instructions on how to behave in society.
Also the tactful and graceful way in which she doesn’t pay notice to veiled insults, or people accidentally saying something insulting to her, isn’t always an act. A lot of the time she genuinely just does not notice.
Bruce, shaking his head: If I sign this, you’re going to have to learn how to forge my signature. If you sign it from the start, you’ll be able to sign whatever you want and they’ll never know.
Do you love Good Omens? Do you love Supernatural? Want another love story with demons and angels? Then try When The Angels Left The Old Country by Sacha Lamb!
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