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In the time before widespread vaccination, death often came early.

Devastating infectious diseases ran rampant in America, killing millions of children and leaving others with lifelong health problems. These illnesses were the main reason why nearly one in five children in 1900 never made it to their fifth birthday.

Over the next century, vaccines virtually wiped out long-feared scourges like polio and measles and drastically reduced the toll of many others.

Today, however, some preventable, contagious diseases are making a comeback as vaccine hesitancy pushes immunization rates down. And well-established vaccines are facing suspicion even from public officials, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, running the federal health department.

“This concern, this hesitancy, these questions about vaccines are a consequence of the great success of the vaccines — because they eliminated the diseases,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “If you’re not familiar with the disease, you don’t respect or even fear it. And therefore you don’t value the vaccine.”

Anti-vaccine activists even portray the shots as a threat, focusing on the rare risk of side effects while ignoring the far larger risks posed by the diseases themselves — and years of real-world data that experts say proves the vaccines are safe.

Some Americans know the reality of these preventable diseases all too well. For them, news of measles outbreaks and rising whooping cough cases brings back terrible memories of lives forever changed — and a longing to spare others from similar pain.

Delaying measles vaccine can be deadly

More than half a century has passed, but Patricia Tobin still vividly recalls getting home from work and hearing her mother scream. Her little sister Karen lay unconscious on the bathroom floor.

It was 1970, and Karen, 6, had contracted measles. While an early vaccine was available, it wasn’t required for school in Miami, where they lived. Although Karen’s pediatrician discussed immunizing the first grader, their mother didn’t share his sense of urgency.

“It’s not that she was against it,” Tobin said. “She just thought there was time.”

Then came a measles outbreak. Karen quickly became very sick. The afternoon she collapsed in the bathroom, Tobin, then 19, called the ambulance. Karen went into a coma and died of encephalitis.

Today, all states require that children get certain vaccines to attend school. But a growing number of people are making use of exemptions allowed for medical, religious or philosophical reasons.

Vanderbilt’s Schaffner said fading memories of measles outbreaks were exacerbated by a fraudulent, retracted study claiming a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot and autism.

The result? Most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

“I’m very upset by how cavalier people are being about the measles,” Tobin said. “I don’t think that they realize how destructive this is.”

Polio changed a life twice

One of Lora Duguay’s earliest memories is lying in a hospital isolation ward with her feverish, paralyzed body packed in ice. She was three years old.

“I could only see my parents through a glass window. They were crying, and I was screaming my head off,” said Duguay, 68. “They told my parents I would never walk or move again.”

It was 1959, and Duguay had polio. It mostly preyed on children and was one of the most feared diseases in the U.S., experts say, causing some terrified parents to keep children inside and avoid crowds.

Given polio’s visibility, the vaccine against it was widely and enthusiastically welcomed. But the early vaccine that Duguay got was only about 80% to 90% effective. Not enough people were vaccinated or protected yet to stop the virus from spreading.

After intensive treatment and physical therapy, Duguay walked and even ran — albeit with a limp.

But in her early 40s, she noticed she couldn’t walk as far as she used to. A doctor confirmed she was in the early stages of post-polio syndrome, a neuromuscular disorder that worsens over time. One morning, she tried to stand up and couldn’t move her left leg.

The disease that changed her life twice is no longer a problem in the U.S. So many children get the vaccine — which is far more effective than earlier versions — that “herd immunity” keeps everyone safe by preventing outbreaks that can sicken the vulnerable.

After whooping cough struck, ‘she was gone’

When Katie Van Tornhout’s baby Callie turned a month old, she began to cough. The Van Tornhouts went to the ER, where Callie’s skin turned blue. At one point she started squirming, and medical staff frantically tried to save her.

“Within minutes,” Van Tornhout said, “she was gone.”

Callie’s viewing was held on her original due date — the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called to confirm she had pertussis, or whooping cough. She was too young for the Tdap vaccine against it and was exposed to someone who hadn’t gotten their booster shot.

Van Tornhout now advocates for childhood immunization through the nonprofit Vaccinate Your Family. She also shares her story with people she meets, like a pregnant customer who came into the restaurant her family ran saying she didn’t want to immunize her baby. She later returned with her vaccinated four-month-old.

“It’s up to us as adults to protect our children — that’s what a parent’s job is,” Van Tornhout said. “I watched my daughter die from something that was preventable…You don’t want to walk in my shoes.”

—AP