#tetanus

I called my doctor and told him “I stepped on some hooked metal wire yesterday and I can’t remember when I got my last tetanus shot”

“Hmm let me see…let me see…yeah you can just come right over. No need to make an appointment”

You're so right. Let's all observe a moment of silence for our vaccinated brethren who will never experience the jaw-clenching joy of tetanus 😔

Ever wonder why you’ve never had measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, smallpox, or polio?

[Paywall-free link; this is the original]

Some 38 people came down with tetanus in 2025, the highest number in nearly 20 years. Experts blame declining vaccination rates and worry that case numbers will keep rising in the coming years if fewer people get the recommended shots.

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The disease was once widespread in the U.S.—and not because more people had barns. It was the development and deployment of a highly effective vaccine in the 1930s that plunged annual cases, which fell from roughly 600 Americans in the 1940s to 17 in 2020. Mortality also dropped, by a whopping 99 percent, following the vaccine’s introduction. “Americans forget how serious these infections are,” because we no longer see so many people around us developing them, says Kristin Moffitt, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Boston’s Children Hospital. But globally, the disease still kills 50,000 people a year. In the U.S., tetanus kills roughly 12 percent of people who come down with it, according to an analysis in April of a recent 15-year period by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most deaths happen in people over 70, as well as in infants. Another analysis published last year in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases found people with diabetes and heart disease also face a high risk of serious complications. Once the toxin takes hold, there is no cure. Doctors administer antibiotics and other drugs to help neutralize the poison, surgically clear the wound that harbors the bacteria, and control muscle spasms with medication. Because nerve damage in the throat is common, about half of hospitalized patients need breathing tubes.

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(idk if you would actually know anything about tetanus, but I can hope)