On my left arm is a large scar — about the size of a silver dollar (for those who remember when dollars were also coins). It’s what remains of my smallpox vaccination.

I also remember being vaccinated against measles but not chickenpox, which I caught in the first grade, forcing me to stay out of school for about five weeks as I remember.

Over the years, I’ve been vaccinated many times, usually against the flu and Tetanus, along with shingles, hepatitis, mumps, and a variety of other diseases.

Both my mother and father were adamant about getting the needed inoculations. My mother was particularly insistent since her brother contracted “scarlet fever,” which affected his brain and later killed him.

So, it’s hard for me to even be sympathetic with those parents who choose not to get their children vaccinated — as long as there are no pre-existing conditions which would keep them from doing so.

Most recently, we’ve had a case of measles in Yolo County, which seems to be spreading from locations in the southern part of the country. Measles for crying out loud!

It seems we’ve forgotten there was a time in this country when infectious diseases ran rampant. A number of Woodland residents contracted polio, for example, and spent their childhoods in iron lungs.

Associated Press science writer Laura Ungar posted a well-written story this past weekend about our poor memories when it comes to vaccines. There was a time, she stated, when infectious disease was the main reason why nearly one in five children in 1900 never made it to their fifth birthday.

“Over the next century, vaccines virtually wiped out long-feared scourges like polio and measles and drastically reduced the toll of many others,” she stated. “Today, however, some preventable, contagious diseases are making a comeback as vaccine hesitancy pushes immunization rates down. And well-established vaccines are facing suspicion even from public officials, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, running the federal health department.”

Indeed, if you look back on obituaries in Yolo County of the early 1900s — which I have — you find a number for children. Unfortunately, most of them are vague as to the cause of death. Indeed, the “Yolo Semi-Weekly Mail” of 1901, which was published twice weekly, has reports of children dying in nearly every issue. But they’re just a few lines in length and the causes are rarely mentioned.

When there is a cause of death cited, it’s usually a “cough,” “fever,” or “long illness.”

Today, Dr. William Schaffner told Ungar, vaccine hesitancy is a “consequence of the great success of the vaccines — because they eliminated the diseases. If you’re not familiar with the disease, you don’t respect or even fear it. And therefore, you don’t value the vaccine.”

Some Americans know the reality of these preventable diseases all too well. For them, news of measles outbreaks and rising whooping cough cases brings back terrible memories of lives forever changed.

Ungar goes on to report what happened when people didn’t get vaccinated and the result. I won’t go into all the examples only the one that seems pertinent today, that of Patricia Tobin, whose sister, Karen, died in 1970 because she didn’t get a measles vaccination.

There was an outbreak and Karen quickly became sick and died. “She immediately went into a coma and she died of encephalitis,” said Tobin, who stayed at her bedside in the hospital. “We never did get to speak to her again.”

Now, as I near 70 years old, I am reminded of a Japanese proverb: “If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples.” For that, I thank my parents.

Jim Smith is the former editor of The Daily Democrat, retiring in 2021 after a 27-year career at the paper.