@tracy_tysonmd: “I’ve never seen a child with Hib epiglottitis.” I hear people say that as if it’s evidence the disease wasn’t dangerous. It’s actually evidence that the vaccine worked. Twenty-five years ago, Hib infections were part of pediatric training. We learned to recognize epiglottitis because a child’s airway could close in minutes. We treated mastoiditis because ear infections could spread into the bone, requiring surgery and risking hearing loss or infections around the brain. Today, many young pediatricians have never seen these diseases. That’s one of modern medicine’s greatest success stories. But here’s the part that keeps me up at night: Diseases don’t disappear because we stop believing in them. They disappear because enough people are protected. When vaccination rates fall, these infections don’t politely stay in the history books. They come back. We’ve already watched measles return in communities with lower vaccination rates. Hib can do the same. One of the hardest parts of being a pediatrician is knowing exactly what we’re risking—not because we read about it in a textbook, but because medicine has shown us what happens when these diseases circulate. The goal of vaccination was never just to save the children of the 1990s. It was to make sure the children of today never have to know what Hib epiglottitis looks like. Let’s keep it that way.#vaccines #vaccinateyourkids #vaccineswork #pediatrics #medicine

Tracy Tyson MD

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Region: US

Friday 03 July 2026 22:36:40 GMT