This shouldn’t be so difficult. My archive contains my vaccination records. Since being vaccinated for a disease like polio in a pandemic is a matter of public concern, I post them here as a matter of interest. The series of three from 1962 to 1963 I would have received in the 10th grade; as the card indicates, I was 14 at the time. They were probably given at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, given my father’s signature on the card.

A record of an earlier vaccination campaign is also in the file, from 1955. The vaccination site was Thomas Jefferson School in San Leandro, California. I remember lining up for a sugar cube with pink liquid in a paper cup, twice as indicated by the dates May 26 and June 15. There is a space for a parent’s signature on the form, but it is empty. Vaccination at that time was nearly universal, and not a matter of debate. But some of course would have already contracted the disease; one, I learned only much later, was my cousin. Apparently polio can recur for some victims at a later age; he died of brain seizures in his early 40s. There is much to be told about my cousin’s life and passing to another state, but later.

I had been vaccinated early on, due to my father’s assignments in Japan and Taiwan and the family’s travel there in the early and mid 50s. I was vaccinated for smallpox, of course, and cholera, typhoid, typhus, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT). Such “vaccination passports” were common; everyone I knew had them, and they were presented when traveling and at school. Following the Foucauldian concept of “biopolitics,” I would argue that if there is any “biological” rationale for the existence of the modern state, it must be—after the moment of the “king’s two bodies” had waned—the ability to close borders, regulate travel, and govern cities in conditions of epidemic. If there is a “biological” foundation to the notion of “right,” it must be there.

Note

8.7. Medical (1951–71). Vaccination records.
Vaccination certificates, 5 pcs.