re: #82 neilk

Who, me? I very clearly said it’s better than not getting a vaccination at all. I’m old enough that they didn’t have chicken pox vaccines when I was a kid and pox parties were the only way to proactively acquire immunity. That isn’t even very old.

Yes, but, we have something better now, and the something better has taken away many of the social factors that used to make this less-good option safer.

If I can’t get my snakebit kid to a doctor, washing and wrapping it, and using the little suction device in the first aid kit is better than nothing. But doing that—or the ol’ cowboy cut and suck, which isn’t recommended at all—instead of letting the nice guy in the helicopter get my child to paramedics with an anti-venin kit is pathological.