Month: January 2025

Vaccines have been around a long time.  A small pox vaccine was perfected in 1796.  Diphtheria vaccines date back to the 1890’s.  Of course, the great Polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk.  We have effective vaccines for rubella, mumps and scarlet fever.  Moving into the 21^st century we have hundreds of vaccines for the flu, pneumonia, shingles, RSV and the granddaddy of them all, Covid. 

We can argue about the effectiveness of the new vaccines.  Do they work?  Are the side effects more damaging than the malady they are trying to prevent?  For example, everyone I know who has had an outbreak of Shingles has taken one or two different Shingles vaccine treatments before contracting the infection.

Clearly the pharmaceutical companies find the vaccination process lucrative.  They have made a concerted effort to address thousands of maladies that are particularly troubling to modern humans.     

Through the miracle of Artificial Intelligence and computerized medical research, pharma has blessed us with a host of very helpful inoculations in 2025. 

Here are a few of my favorites.

The Titleist Optimization Serum (ProV1 maximo smackosino)

This vaccine smooths out the golf swing of high handicap golfers and adds significant distance to the length of their shots.  For years, avid golfers have been plagued by high scores as the result of a crummy golf swing.  They have invested thousands of dollars on lessons and equipment.  They spend countless hours grooving their terrible swings on the practice range.  Someone with an average score of 93 who fully dedicates himself or herself to the traditional techniques for six months usually ends up with a scoring average of 96. Studies have found that an annual injection of the Titleist Optimization Serum (TOS) will add 25 yards to tee shots and 15 yards to the irons.  TOS has proven to reduce the average golfers eighteen hole score by five strokes. 

Side effects include: Hitting putts thirty yards past the hole.  An urge to watch every King Kong movie ever produced and a craving for very large bananas. 

Instapotential Calmingitus Vaccination (Nofearing kabooming)

Studies show that 78% of Americans have a deep seated fear of exploding pressure cookers.  They have heard family stories of great explosions in their ancestors’ kitchens in the 1900s.  They believe that the power of these explosions is measured in megatons. They know that the instruments used by their grandmothers explode so well that they are the favorite tool of terrorist bomb makers.   The IC vaccine is targeted to the area of the brain that generates this fear and suppresses the anxiety.  87% of the tested recipients showed no reluctance to use the R2D2 look alike sitting on the kitchen counter a few days after inoculation. 

Side effects include:  A strange fondness for commercial fireworks and a propensity to impress all of your relatives at family picnics by prefacing your actions with “Hey Y’All!  Watch this!!”    

Overthetop Winatallcosts Compulsion Damper (Sloth Serum)

Most Americans have a heightened sense of competition.  Their drive to win at everything is an impediment to a healthy life.  They may spend ten hours a week in the gym so that they can annihilate their four year old niece at Hungry Hungry Hippo. A pickle ball contest is treated like an event in the Hunger Games. Many have tried Yoga to assuage the aggressive behavior.  Typically, they become disappointed and then, angry if they can’t be the calmest person in the session.  An annual shot of the Sloth Serum dramatically decreases the patient’s metabolism resulting in a significant decline in this over the top behavior.

Side effects include falling asleep at hockey games and an urge to sit in a tree and eat leaves on a warm summer day.

Bison Avoidance Serum (Buffalo Begonis)

A highly effective inoculation prevents both the American and European Bison from occupying your living room.  The pharmaceutical makers are not certain how this vaccine works.  However it has been extremely effective.  In fact, for those who have been inoculated, only one instance of Bison Invasion has been reported.  The event occurred in a one room cabin near Theodore Roosevelt State Park, in Montana.  A Bison cow followed her calf through an open door of the cabin.  Apparently the calf was following the scent of mustard greens the trapper was preparing for dinner.  In essence, the vaccine has been completely effective in keeping all types of bisons out living rooms around the world.   

There are no known side effects to this injection.  Because of the incredibly high efficacy of this treatment, the pharmaceutical makers recommend that all 345 million Americans be immunized.  The cost is a reasonable $325 per dose.  A three step treatment is recommended.   

So the vaccine industry is booming.  The big pharmaceutical companies are researching and developing products in record time.  Artificial intelligence cuts the time to bring a drug to market to 10% of the historical development period.  What took years now takes weeks.  Of course this is only done to improve the health of men and women all around the world.  Certainly billions of dollars of profits are created for big pharma in the process.  The drug industry CFO’s tell us that the 100 to 150 billion dollars of net income is needed to sustain development of these great treatments. 

They still haven’t cracked cancer and heart disease.  But vaccines to mitigate the urge of binge watching featured shows from streaming services are just around the corner. 

I really hope they are not working on anything to curb cravings for bacon and fried chicken.  If they are, I hope my wife never finds out about it. 

It seemed that children were a lot healthier when I was growing up.  Okay, we all got pounded by the big childhood diseases: chicken pox, measles (three day and German).  I had mumps. My sister had scarlet fever.  We all had tonsillitis and tonsillectomies.  We had inoculations for the really bad stuff.  For example, small pox, diphtheria and polio. 

I always put chicken pox and measles on my healthcare portal history.  Usually, the medical professional will ask when I had them.  I respond that I don’t know when.  “How do you know you have had them?”  “I grew up in a government housing project. We all had them before age three.”

Other than the standards, we never got sick.  At least that is what our parents told us.  If you felt bad, it was a phase you were going through.  “Mom, I really feel crummy.”  “How so?”  “I have a headache. My arms, legs, and stomach hurt.  I feel hot.”  “It’s just a phase you’re going through.”  “Aren’t these symptoms of the Bubonic Plague.”  “Yes.  But if you don’t break out in pustules, it’s probably just a phase.”  Eventually, all of the symptoms faded and we were never classified as sick.  

“Mom!  Wow, I am really tired.  All I want to do is sleep.  I think I have a low grade fever.  There has been an outbreak of mononucleosis at school.”  “Don’t worry dear.  It’s probably just growing pains.  It’s a phase you are going through and you will feel better soon.”  Sure enough, in three or four weeks everything is fine.  Again, I was never considered sick.

Many years later, we had our daughter tested for allergies.  The physician said that she was very allergic to two or three different allergens common to the State of Florida.  He asked if I had allergies as a child.  I said no.  We were poor.  He took that a little harder than I thought he should.  None of the kids in our neighborhood had allergies because we couldn’t afford them.  Treatments were expensive, so every summer we would go through another phase. Sometime, around peak ragweed season, we would cough and hack.  Perhaps we spiked a weird rash.  When the fall came and the symptoms dissipated, the phase was over.

It is impossible to tell if kids were healthier when I was growing up.  There may have been fewer illnesses but there were a lot more phases.  

Medicine in the 2020’s is so much more advanced than the 1960’s.  I have at least five close friends that would not be alive if not for the wonders of modern medicine.  Treatments for many dread diseases are nearly miraculous. 

In some ways, however, I can still hear the words of my mother. 

A while back, I started to feel a little puny.  Sore muscles, stiff joints, tired and worn out.  I live in the 21^st Century so I took my symptoms to the Mayo Clinic.  After running at least 100 blood tests, they concluded that I definitely have an unusual auto immune disease.  I was born with the propensity for this disease to surface.  It cannot be transmitted to anyone else.  Very importantly, it really is not life threatening or a precursor to anything more serious than severe aches and pains.  The symptoms can be lessened with steroids.  In almost all cases, the disease stays active for eighteen to sixty months.  Eventually, it completely disappears and does not reoccur.

So I am listening to this world renowned Rheumatologist.  He is armed with 100s of tests. He understands this peril in incredible detail.  I visit him every three months and adjust my medications exactly as he prescribes.  Underneath it all however, when I boil down his feedback and prognosis, I am back in 1963.  His advice sounds just like Mom’s.  It is sprinkled with complex medical terms.  Yet, when you sort it all out, he is simply saying: “Don’t worry, this is just a phase you’re going through.”  

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