He Died of Diphtheria in His Sleep: Why We Still Need Vaccines Today

On March 13, 2025, Elena Conis, medical historian, wrote that of the more than 200 Americans infected by a measles outbreak in Texas and beyond, most were unvaccinated, including a 6-year-old child who died. For some of us who have experienced childhood diseases, such as whooping cough or rubella, or heard about them from our parents and relatives, it is hard to imagine in 2025 that fears that helped fuel these outbreaks still exist  after millions of lives have been saved by vaccines.

Early in the 19^th century, some people rejected the smallpox vaccine because they did not trust those doctors and scientists who were promoting them or because they viewed vaccines as an affront to God’s will. Others worried about the dangers they had heard about or witnessed. The fact that the early version of the vaccine on occasion spread the disease served to heighten those fears.

Increasingly, governments made vaccinations mandatory, and over a century ago, those who refused could face quarantine, fines, or even jail time. Vaccination objectors argued that the diseases that the vaccines prevented were not that serious or that mandatory vaccination undermined their individual liberties. We know that these ideas still persist today, where popular influencers, such as politicians, are saying that measles and mumps are not a big deal.

We know that within our modern era, childhood vaccines have allowed children to grow into healthy adults. This is something parents hoped for centuries ago when diseases emptied entire towns, destroyed economies, ravaged our troops, and overwhelmed hospital and medical staff who succumbed in helping others, like during the Spanish Flu, which my great-grandmother, Maggie Hart, died of in 1919. For those of us who have never seen them, the worst manifestations of some of these now preventable diseases are almost unimaginable. However, Conis, believes that it is now worth remembering their toll in the annals of history, especially for those who think these illnesses are not serous.

Let’s begin our journey back in time by looking at smallpox that caused fever, headache, nausea, body aches, and a rash of excoriating pus-filled blisters. In some cases, the pustules spread so densely that they covered body surfaces, crusted over the eyes and mucous membranes until internal hemorrhaging led to death. An outbreak could kill up to 30 percent of the people infected and leave survivors with pockmarks and blindness.

My Lived Experience with Childhood Disease and Vaccine

In this blog, I can only speak for myself and remember from my personal experiences and from my family history what life was like before vaccine development. One such story was about how, when I was a baby, I did not receive the smallpox vaccine because I had eczema, which was a contraindication. However, when I was16 and entered nursing school, I had to get the vaccine because it was not yet irradicated worldwide. I remember that my upper left arm had a huge pustule on it about two days later, making it very painful to move. I had a fever and did not feel well at high school, so I went to the nurse’s office, but it was closed. Then I approached the school principal, showing her the pockmark, and she backed away when I told her what it was. She isolated me in a small room until school let out. All I can say is that I would not want to even imagine having smallpox that covered my body and eyes, for sure!

The first memory I had was a tale of my paternal grandmother who walked with a limp because one leg was shorter than the other. She had to wear a special shoe lift on one foot to make her gait more balanced when she walked because she had polio as a child. In an interview with a nurse colleague, she told me that when she was a new graduate nurse in the 1950s, she volunteered to be in charge of a polio unit because no one else in the hospital wanted to work there. Once she entered the unit with the iron lungs, she could not leave, not even for dinner. She remembered how challenging it was to care for such compromised patients and how a young man came into the unit straight from work in his business suite during her shift. This was just prior to  vaccine availability. He didn’t feel well that day. She lamented that he died some days later.

And then there was the story my Mom told me of when she contracted whooping cough as a child. She recalled not being able to breathe or stop coughing for hours. She made a “whoop” when she did. My grandmother had to put her head over the side of the bed to drain the phlegm that was choking her. There were no antibiotics, so it lasted months. She remembered how her mom put her on her front porch to get some fresh air and her friend joined her to play games. He caught whooping cough from her.

My aunt remembered waking up one morning when she was a teen and finding her younger 5-year-old brother dead in his bed. He went to sleep with a sore throat at night and choked because he had diphtheria. She talked about the sadness that she had with her family for years. My friend, who wanted to have children, spoke sadly about how her husband had mumps when he was in puberty and became sterile from it.

As for me, I have a sad story to tell about my experience with rubella –-German measles. It was Christmas Eve, and my mother noticed both my brother and I had a red rash on our faces and a fever. We got to celebrate the holiday at home, and although we both received brand new bikes from Santa, we did not get to ride them outside that week because our pediatrician diagnosed us with rubella. Years later I found out I was lucky.

This story was significant further down the road when my school friend did not contract rubella in her early years. This proved to be tragic for her when she was a teacher in grade school and was in early pregnancy. At that time, she caught it from her students during an outbreak. Her son was born with major heart issues that required many surgeries, mental disability, cataracts at birth, and more. She had trouble getting funding for his care when he was younger, but now he lives in a group home.

What I learned from my friend’s experience was to get my rubella titer checked before I got pregnant. It was high only because I had rubella when I was a child because there was no vaccine. Based on my lived experience as a child and as a historian, I think it is important to remember the past and all the lives vaccinations saved, so that history does not repeat itself, but not everyone would agree with me.

What is the Belief of Antivaxxers Today?

When I first brought my young baby to the pediatrician I asked him about the rumors I had heard of vaccines causing autism. At that time, scientists were conducting research to show that it didn’t, but my doctor told me that he had studied in Italy in med school, and that he saw many children die of whooping cough and diphtheria. He believed that vaccines were a Godsend and convinced me to believe the same. Today Robert F. Kennedy, US Department of Health and Human Services, claims that the measles, mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism, despite more than a dozen studies performed in seven countries on three continents involving thousands of children showing that it doesn’t.

When asked about the polio vaccine, Mr. Kennedy claimed that it caused an explosion in soft tissue cancers that killed many more people than polio did. This has been proven to be a falsehood, since it has not occurred. Paul Offit, MD stated that when Mr. Kennedy says he wants vaccines to be better studied, he means that he wants studies that confirm his fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs, such as HIV does not cause AIDS.

What are the Fears of Pro-Vax Pediatricians?  What are Doctors Saying?

• They will have to treat diseases such as measles when they have never seen cases before. This could delay diagnosis and treatment, thus spreading disease rapidly.
• They say, “I never want to see a case of polio, but I’m very fearful I will.”
• They worry that a disease called Haemophiles Influenzae that can quickly cut off breathing in children will return because cases have already popped up.
• They feel helpless to prevent childhood diseases that have been preventable.
• They fear that even adults will be vulnerable to “childhood” diseases and that vaccines will be underfunded and not available for all.

What did We Learn from the Recent Texas Measles Outbreak?

As the current administration moves to dismantle international public health safeguards, pull funding from local health departments, and legitimize health misinformation, some experts fear that the US is setting the stage for a measles resurgence. Although in  some states, governors promote childhood vaccination, in others the people are fed falsehoods, which makes it challenging to reverse the current trend. However, the good news is that most Americans want to get their shots and make sure their children are protected from the devastation of preventable childhood diseases that may spread to older persons as well. What we learn from Texas is up to us so history does not repeat itself. Where do you stand?