Something to remember by her is that the determination to live is something that keeps us going.
I wish I could apply that optimism to my perception of a societal shift away from disability accomodations and the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy... Enabling parents to foster unvaccinated children is a guarantee that we'll get a resurgence of this type of disease.
I recommend everyone educate themselves on our immune system: the book "Immune" (ISBN: 1529360684) introduces the vast complexity in a very approachable manner. Also the podcasts through MicrobeTV by Vincent Racaniello are excellent.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-how-quickly...
After eradicating polio for decades, we saw a case for the first time in 2022. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9577438/
And given the drop in rates of immunization post covid, we can very expect more if the trend continues.
It’s weird that we require interventions that do have some documented risk to our own citizens so that foreigners can visit without restriction. If an illness is eradicated in our borders, why should we let in people who might have it? Odd tradeoff calculus.
You absolutely could require proof of immunization to enter a country. We don’t even try.