Rene Nejsum
Dr. Lucky Tran 
The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.
Jef Poskanzer@luckytran Same brainfart happened with Y2K - afterwards lots of idiots were saying it was no big deal. It was no big deal because lots of smart people worked hard for years to fix it. This happens over and over.
Kevin LaRose,aka Grumpasaurus@jef @Armadillosoft @luckytran I’m seeing the same pattern playing out with the lessons learned from World War II. There is now a concerted effort underway to rehabilitate Adolf Hitler, and in some places, it’s succeeding. My mother’s partner later in her life had, as a teenager, worked to forge passports for Jewish people trying to flee The Netherlands. His stories were fascinating, even more so taking into account that he was an actual link to that history. Mom passed away in 2023, and so far as I know her partner is still alive, but people like him are becoming very few and very far between. Meanwhile bad actors feel free to attempt to revise history.
LeaD 
@Thumper1964 @jef @Armadillosoft @luckytran Sadly, it only takes an average of two generations to forget the lessons and details of the past.
Wilm has moved / is verhuisd@TizaneNZ @Thumper1964 @jef @Armadillosoft @luckytran “All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.”
— Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Leeloo@jef @luckytran
It was also "not a big deal" because it was way exaggerated. Over here, we had politicians insisting that basically anything that contained as much as a resistor would need to be tested, certified or replaced.
How do you test something ahead of time which doesn't have a clock you can set forward?
DamonHD@leeloo @jef @luckytran by looking at anything that does implicit or explicit date calcs such as your computer diary or the trading system that I helped looked after with trades up to 30Y duration. Writing specific tests of date logic does not involve messing with the system clock. Nor does making sure that data stores can and do get widened to 4 digit years, etc, etc. Please don't be dismissive of work that you did not see or do.
@DamonHD @jef @luckytran
Clearly you didn't read what I wrote.
I worked in a company that did a lot of work to expand their Cobol-based financial system from 6 to 8 digits. The problem was real, but it was not at all the kind of panic that some politicians tried to get us to believe.
Even the old black and white TV I used when I visited my parents survived.
@leeloo @jef @luckytran there are always grifters and snake oil sellers that will ride any wave to make unwarranted cash, but the problem was very real, and we had to start well ahead of many others at my financial client's trading back office etc with multi-year trades generating cash flows many times a year. And in 2023 my new uni issued me an acceptance letter with an end date of 1931, so it's still messing things up.
Confused Middle Aged Dad@leeloo @jef @luckytran is this because people, particularly politician types, have a tendency to either overreact or under react. So, those who knew something needed to be done, and wanted teams and budgets to do so, hyped it up to try and get any form of traction and reaction from key decision makers, at which point the dial moved from lack of action to panic.
@confusedMiddleAgedDad @jef @luckytran
I agree. But that still contributed a lot to people outside of IT thinking it was a big nothing.
Because most of the panic was a big nothing. And that panic over nothing took the attention away from the very real problem.
@jef @luckytran also happened with the ozone hole
Pax Ahimsa GethenYep, I was one of them. Was seeing Y2K-related errors as early as 1994. Was on call NYE '99 after working on Y2K prep in a university IT department for over a year.
Lenora@jef @luckytran exactly, my company prepared for Y2K starting 5 years before the timeline and were ready. I worked in MIS and we had a little party for the rollover at 1 am the next day
Camille Bacon-Smith@FaithinBones @jef @luckytran I know people who worked for years to make sure the electrical grid would hold at the millenium rollover. A lot of really smart people doing stultifyingly boring work who then got called alarmist when they succeeded
PhilSalkie@BaconSmith @FaithinBones @jef @luckytran
Industrial Automation professional. We absolutely busted ass leading up to Y2K, paperwork going back and forth to verify that this or that device wasn't vulnerable, that it had been patched, tracking version numbers, etc. Fortunately, back then there wasn't much control hardware yet that had a real time clock, but there was plenty of PC software doing supervisory actions.
I received commercial automation software in October 1999 that wasn't yet Y2K capable - some folks clearly weren't getting the message!
Dibs@jef @luckytran when the Olympics came to London, my Borough council had to spend a fortune on civil contingencies planning. We never needed it.
Stumpy The Mutt@jef @luckytran I worked on a lot of Y2K stuff in 1999. Went out to watch the fireworks in DC from the Virginia side on a spur of the moment. A limousine full of rich kids pulled up and were mostly yammering on their cell phones when midnight came. One of them said "oh well, so much for that prediction" when everything went on as normal.
Jima 
@jef @luckytran @vfrmedia I've seen the "hole in the ozone layer" thrown out there recently as a similar example on the climate-change front; yes, the disaster there didn't happen, but because it was averted by global cooperation, not because it was an exaggerated threat.
Attie Grande
Quinn Norton@luckytran kind of true of a bunch of things though, from housing codes to food safety to bridges that stay up.
Dianora (Diane Bruce)@luckytran Anyone doing any genealogy knows the horrors. Many young children died in infancy.
jetsilver@Dianora @luckytran When I was doing some work on my family's genealogy I discovered that my great-grandfather died very young of meningitis. I would wager that my great-grandmother and her young children would be shocked to find out that anyone would turn a vaccine down.
Robyn@jetsilver
My mother's father died of meningitis 6 months before she was born, just before antibiotics became available. We got all the vaccines as soon as they were available. And never allowed to put out heads under in natural hot pools.
@Dianora @luckytran
My mother's father died of meningitis 6 months before she was born, just before antibiotics became available. We got all the vaccines as soon as they were available. And never allowed to put out heads under in natural hot pools.
@Dianora @luckytran
@Dianora @luckytran since I saw it I always think of that viral post, the one that says if you look at the graveyards before and after, the effectiveness of vaccines is literally written in stone.
@ShadSterling @luckytran Yes. Very true. Or looking at genealogy lists. It can be very sad.
@Dianora @luckytran a trip to old cemeteries make it painfully obvious why couples had big families. They hoped some of their kids would make it to adulthood
GreyCat, Red Mage@luckytran history repeats itself the moment it leaves living memory.
Dr. A@luckytran Woo Hoo! That’s well said. That type of logic is downright convincing. Who would’ve thunk it?
Robin Barton@luckytran Well put
Kerr Avonsen (she/her)@luckytran Reminds me of all the people who think that the Y2K bug was a hoax because the disaster was prevented (through relentless hard work by a LOT of people).
Miguel Torrellas@luckytran painfully I will say the same about wars
StarravenSo let them see polio.
kolya@luckytran there's no glory in prevention
Solarbird 
@luckytran similarly the y2k problem. we handled it too well. so now every warning about large-scale problems is shrugged off as panicky bullshit.
(it didn’t help that the grifter crowd turned it into doomsday either of course)
Kate@luckytran ..unluckily Florida for example may be high on the list to reenact some disease horrors just for the learning and exporting the shit elsewhere. And to quote a famous President: Maybe we drop an atomic bomb on them just to see what happens, maybe we can stop the disease by this?
Noah Bailey@luckytran medical privacy is obviously very important for so many reasons, but it’s also obscured and hidden the suffering caused by infectious disease. The visceral imagery of the iron lung and the widespread photos of people suffering from measles, smallpox, etc are something we don’t get thanks to confidentiality. Out of sight, out of mind.
Fluffy Kitty Cat@nbailey @luckytran at the beginning of the pandemic we should have had cameras in the hospitals showing people gasping for air as they died of COVID so people knew what they wee signing up for if they didn't wear a mask
bmoreinis=>journa.host@luckytran @5ciFiGirl An ex-friend says COVID vaccines cause strokes. I live in a state that is waiting for the CDC’s OK for the new one. Because I live with a diabetic and teach in a high school classroom, I am going across state lines tomorrow to New Hampshire to get my 2025–26. It is ironic that the CDC is now so broken that I do not trust its advice and rush ahead; if I get that stroke he will have the last laugh.
Mx Verda@bmoreinis but your housemate and students will feel the love of your decision to try to protect them and yourself, with the best info you had at the time @luckytran @5ciFiGirl
Sci-Fi Girl@MxVerda @bmoreinis @luckytran
FYI, for 8 states:
Universal Hub (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image #Massachusetts announces widespread vaccine program and new public-health consortium with most Northeastern states; CVS, Walgreens to start scheduling Covid-vaccine appointments tomorrow https://www.universalhub.com/2025/massachusetts-announces-widespread-vaccine-program-and-new-public #PublicHealth #ThisAintFlorida
@5ciFiGirl @MxVerda @luckytran funny thing: scheduled a Walgreens jab today in the next town, was turned away because under 65 and “We follow the CDC’s guidance. Go ask your doctor”. But my local Walgreens said “just walk in, no problem.” From states rights to towns rights in two days!
@MxVerda @luckytran @5ciFiGirl oh, I was never in doubt! It’s just that the freedom to ignore the CDC was never one I wanted, having argued so strongly for their standards of scientific rigor a few years ago.
Edelruth, PBS Passport HolderAnd, they could resolve this by just walking through an old cemetery.
Or ask someone my age: my parents shipping us children out of Dublin for the summer(s) when polio threatened.
Most of us (I have a lot of siblings) had a classmate who wore calipers.
Garth Cummings@Edelruth @luckytran Itzhak Perlman, who just turned 80.
@Edelruth ... what's a caliper? / will look up later @luckytran
Did you see the movie Forrest Gump? The character playing child Gump is in polio calipers at the start of the movie. They were a rehabilitation tool that looked like an metal splint, held to the legs with leather straps (polio epidemics predate velcro). The leg muscles of a portion of polio victims were too weak for them to walk without assistance for quite a while during recovery. Years, for some.
Kirby@luckytran eyyyy recency bias
the gripe ibis@luckytran i have seen “road traffic accidents are at an all time low, do we really even need the seatbelt law?” in an actual publication, so this reactionary tendency is very deeply ingrained
Al & Val's Modern Homesteading@luckytran Well, that's about to change. Glad I grew up when I did. It will be sad watching all those young folks dying without the chance to ever be my age. Because they had the bad luck to be born into ignorance.
recursive 🏳️🌈@luckytran conceptually I think this is like Kondratieff cycles
Or any other concept for "the people who experienced it are no longer here to tell us what it was like" (and we don't believe written records in the same ways — admittedly for sometimes good reasons)
My grandparents saw the last widespread victims of polio among their children (who were too young to understand it as being as terrible as it is). The last of those grandparents died in 2011
My uncle was one of the only victims of polio I have known closely, born in 1938 (died fairly young in 2002)
Hiker Geek 🌲💻🌲Researchers talked about mRNA having the possibility of creating cancer vaccines. I think everyone knows people who were claimed by cancer.
What does it say that in the face of this scourge that we cancelled the research that may save us from it?
I'm afraid there are a lot of people with little empathy for others and a politized ignorance.
ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES
K.R. Paradis@benroyce @luckytran There is a small cemetery in Houston where the majority of people died of Yellow Fever.
There are some crazy folks out there if they want to make this every day occurrences again.
https://www.houstoniamag.com/news-and-city-life/2020/06/history-of-yellow-fever-in-houston
ArchaeoIain
J. R. DePriest 
:EA DATA. SF:@luckytran my wife literally saw this on Next Door with someone complaining conspiratorially, "I've never even heard of some of the diseases they want me to vaccinate against!"