It was reality:Before the polio vaccine was licensed in 1955, tens of thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands of people had some sort of permanent paralysis. The United States suffered a German measles (rubella) outbreak between 1964 and 1965 and while not a death sentence, more than 12.5 million people got Rubella. According to the CDC, cases of polio or rubella complications in the U.S. are virtually zero and the ones that do occur are in those who are unvaccinated. So why are these things — polio, rubella and Covid — less of a threat today? They are the reasons that most reading this article have most likely not have had any preventable disease like measles, mumps, rubella or polio.