>> My name is Janice Flood Nichols. I'm a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a polio
survivor from a 1953 epidemic in my suburb, and a participant in the 1954 polio vaccine trial.
I am a real vaccine advocate, as most people in my generation are. I think the reason for that is
we didn't have many vaccines as a child. Most children, we survived the childhood diseases,
but many of us have really bad memories of how much it was awful to have
scabs in our head and all over our body from chickenpox and our moms telling us,
please do not touch any of those scabs or you’re going to get scars.
We have bad memories and, therefore, we are very, very thankful that we have so many vaccines today.
Polio hit my family very hard. My twin brother, Frankie, died. Two of my friends died.
I was temporarily paralyzed and made a wonderful recovery, and another boy made a recovery similar
to mine. I went to graduate school with a girl who was deaf from the measles. I have another friend
whose younger sister died of a pneumonia that's associated with chickenpox. My mother used to tell
me stories about moms who contracted rubella when they were pregnant and how it caused stillbirth
and miscarriage and babies being born with all kinds of physical problems. My grandmother even
told me about what it was like in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-19, and that epidemic took
the life of two of my grandfather's brothers who were in their twenties, and they died a day apart.
Everyone had stories like this, and as we developed more and more vaccines,
less adults and less children had to deal with all of these diseases. Most of the time
things worked out fine and no one suffered in any way once they were over the acute phases,
but we never, never know. And the only ammunition we have ever had is vaccination.
Children are not as susceptible to COVID as say people in my age group,
but they can still be hospitalized and they can still die. And parents of children are really
struggling with what should they do. Should they listen to their friends? Probably not
because friends can scare us and confuse us. And I think if you watch a lot of TV or read a lot of
magazines, you'll really have a new horror story that you'll be learning about every single day.
So, I want to suggest that you just listen to your pediatrician or other family
practice physician and their nurses. Write down your questions,
make an appointment, and make sure that you go in and you get all of your answers you need to
know whether you should really vaccinate your children or not. I can't tell you what to do,
but I certainly hope that you will choose vaccination because it is our only ammunition.
I don't ever want us to go back to the horror stories that we had when I was a child.