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Vaccination: 1960s Style

Line Up Kids! - Vaccination Day
It was almost 60 years ago, it must have been somewhere around 1964. All the students at my school one morning were told to line-up in a long single file that snaked around the school hall. The school principal, Brother Polycarpanius, announced that the reason we were there was to get "vaccinated". I don't think there was any explanation for what we were being vaccinated for, but it didn't really matter. Such was the fear in the community of potentially deadly infectious diseases, polio and whooping cough for instance, that generally people were only too eager to accept any protection the then new fangled science of vaccination could provide.

Anyway, any attempt by the boys to object was useless, as the Brothers slapped their canes against the side of the long black cassocks. Any thought of raising an idea like "informed medical consent" would be met with a hit of the cane and "Get back in line boy".

Get back in line, boy!

Wielding Huge Hypodermic Syringes
Brother Polycarpanius thrust aside a white screen curtain at the end of the hall to expose a group of white-jacketed nurses wielding huge hypodermic syringes. Progress was quick and it seemed that 1000 students were quickly sent through the process. I suppose they used different needles for each kid - but cannot remember. I do remember the needle felt like a piece of rusty barbed wire being thrust in your arm - but even at that young age, I remember the feeling of losing the fear of contagion lurking everywhere; and a sense of freedom being conferred upon the vaccinated was exhilarating.

Some Kids Feared the Needles
Then came the few kiddies who so feared the needles, they were willing to risk the ire of the Brothers and their canes by resisting. They screamed, they cried, they begged. Even as they were dragged towards the nursing stations, they grabbed any object or jammed their legs into door frames in a futile effort to delay the process. However, with the persistence of the Brothers and a posse of Year 12 students grabbing each limb, resistance was useless and eventually they got the needle, finally being dumped as a whimpering mess in the middle of the school hall. Talk about vaccine hesitancy!

I have often wondered if some of those who described themselves as being vaxine hesitants, are really just like those fearful kids on the school vaccination line?

A Great Relief
Once I got home, I can remember being asked by my parents if anything interesting had happened at school.

"Yes, we got vaccinated"
"Well, that's a relief"

And a relief it was. For over sixty years I, and all those kids who lined up to be vaccinated in 1964, have lived life, and traveled to the four corners or a world full of contagion, without any fear of contagious disease - until March 2020.

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