I appreciate this post, actually. My first kid got the full slate of current shots, minus chickenpox and HepB. My second kid got the same ones I got as a kid in the early 80s, because the stuff his brother got just seemed so excessive and unnecessary. Like, how big is the risk for all those things, really? My youngest, now 3, hasn't had any, because he was just getting to the age when we usually start, when everything got shut down, and it became a gigantic hassle to go down to the health department. So that got delayed indefinitely.

But here's the thing: of my three children, the oldest has the poorest overall health. None of them are unhealthy, and none have ever been sick enough to require antibiotics, but he takes longer to get over colds, has less stamina, and is shorter for his age. Middle kid does generally better on all those counts, and youngest... eh, it's a little hard to tell at his age, but it looks like the pattern continues there. He's the tallest-for-his-age of the group, and remains in very robust health. When our whole household came down with the latest edition of covid some weeks ago, littlest got over it first, and bounced back the quickest. Is that just a function of age, or do all those shots prevent serious disease at the expense of making you more vulnerable to ordinary disease?

I'm still on the fence about whether/when to get the youngest any shots at all. I'm inclined to follow our old pediatrician's advice: "If you only get *one* shot, make it the polio shot". Maybe MMR and tetanus. But I think we'll stop there. There just seem to be way too many after that, with diminishing returns and accumulating risks. But this post is the kind of data I need to see, to navigate this.