Two Things—Addresses and Vaccines

As a child, I remember the yearly ritual of my stepmother re-writing, longhand, several of the pages in the family address book. She’d get a blank page from the back and copy any page that was less than flawless, keeping all names in alphabetical order (leaving one opening per two-page spread for new additions or corrections). She’d start at the beginning of November so that everything would be ready for Christmas cards, plus a few Hanukkah cards, to be sent.

Now that many families no longer send holiday cards every year, the annual tradition of maintenance has also largely been deferred.

Recently, I had the rather embarrassing situation of desperately needing contact information for someone I’d last corresponded with in 2021-2022. And, being me (bad with names), I correctly remembered the approximate time period, but couldn’t find the contact information.

(I had put the relevant text file into the wrong folder and not made an entry in Contacts.)

It definitely doesn’t help that there is no single source of truth for these things in our digital lives.

So:

1. Check your contacts app to see if the people you regularly correspond with are in there.
2. Add the ones who aren’t.
3. For those where you find them important, make sure you have as many forms of contact as you can, including email and phone.
4. Make liberal use of any notes fields to make things easier to search on.
5. Also strongly suggest adding a date you last contacted that person. (I may not need recruiters from 15-20 years ago.)

Vaccination

Here in the US, we’ve now got a 🦆 in charge of Health and Human Services, and that loon’s part of the anti-vax movement. That means that diseases that shouldn’t be spreading, will be spreading.

TDaP - Get a Booster

Generally TDaP (tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis) shots are recommended every ten years. However, there’s a gotcha that you probably don’t know (emphasis added):

Researchers looked really closely at all of these data, and from them were able to figure out that in the first year after TdaP, its effectiveness is about 70%. By four years out, that protection is less than 10%. Given that the most common source of infection for infants is siblings, this is a real problem. (source)

Pertussis can cause lifelong lung damage. Do not want.

MMR - Get a Booster

Measles, Mumps, and Rubella immunity was generally considered to be lifelong. Mumps immunity, however, is more ephemeral, at least with our current vaccine (emphasis added):

Though the study found immunity for mumps lasts on average for 27 years, the study’s co-author Joseph Lewnard, now an assistant professor of epidemiology at University of California, Berkeley, says not all college freshmen fare so well.

“A substantial number of people may have lost protection by the time they’re 18 and entering college,” says Lewnard. So, he says, vaccinating “routinely would be a good thing to consider instead of only using doing it as a reactive step once an outbreak has started.” (source)

I’ve already had my MMR booster. How about you?

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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