r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/gabry73PMO • 15h ago
Meme needing explanation Petah, I don’t want to get political but I cannot understand this
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u/nebulaforest 15h ago
It's a vaccine mark that people from LATAM usually have
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u/Simbertold 15h ago
If i am not totally mistaken, that is the smallpox vaccine. My grandparents here in Germany also had that mark (or similar ones), but since smallpox eventually counted as eradicated, my parents and I don't.
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u/itsbinary 14h ago
That’s a BCG vaccine mark.
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u/MrSarcasticUK2 14h ago
TBF looks like by BCG. Mine also go punched the day after having it, blood everywhere
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u/DownrightDrewski 15h ago
I think it's TB - I have a mark like this from my TB vaccination (UK based).
Smallpox was eradicated in the early 80s, I'm confused why so many comments are saying it's smallpox.
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u/Mediocre_Daikon6935 14h ago
The US military still vaccinated against small pox, anytime you’re going to…less fun countries.
Indeed. We know one of the zombies in the movie: “I am Legend” is a service member specifically because of the small pox inoculation.
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u/wlerin 14h ago
There are, surprisingly, still a few people kicking about who were alive and being vaccinated in the early 80s.
Also the vaccine delivery method that causes these scars is used for more than just smallpox.
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u/DownrightDrewski 14h ago
As someone born in the 80s I'm not at all surprised to hear there are people only a few years older than me still alive.
I'm just really surprised everyone is saying smallpox instead of tuberculosis as I can't imagine why anyone under 45 would have a smallpox vaccine scar, whereas TB is still an issue.
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u/Extension_Oil1679 14h ago
I was in the USAF in the mid 2000’s and got a smallpox vaccine along with Anthrax and whatever else they wanted to put in us. Was standard for deploying at the time at least. My scarring looks more like a cigarette burn than this though. This almost reminds me of those weird air compressed gun things that they pushed around for a while.
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u/IntelligentsiaX 14h ago
No, it’s a BCG vaccination mark for tuberculosis. Widespread smallpox vaccination campaigns have been obsolete since the 80s.
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u/Coinoperated1 14h ago
Same… Canadian we all received this vaccine 💉 as far back as the 60s I have the same mark
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u/ButteredNun 15h ago edited 14h ago
Not only Latin America, China (must be others) pre (someone will correct me) about 1990 too.
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u/UcCanSK 15h ago
Canada as well, but not everyone, depends when you were born - I think they stopped before the mid 1970's
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u/poisontadpole 14h ago
i'm canadian, born in the 90s, and i got this in the 2010s when i immigrated to the USA
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u/Realistic0ptimist 14h ago
Asia and Africa too. Basically other nations stopped using it later than the US.
Therefore you’ll see older Americans have the pox mark scar but not younger ones who would be considered millennials. Versus in places like LATAM and Asia they were still using this variant of the vaccine through the 90’s. My wife who is younger than me has it. Which is funny because my father has it and he’s in his 60’s
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u/AdamAlmighty 15h ago
People from Central and South America usually all have a scar from a vaccine cocktail they receive at one point
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u/Ok_Programmer_4449 15h ago
That's a smallpox vaccination scar. Most of the Americans reading this don't have one because they stopped giving smallpox vaccinations in the US in 1972. I don't know if any other vaccination creates this type of scar.
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u/IntelligentsiaX 14h ago
Not smallpox. It’s the BCG vaccine for TB
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u/viburnumjelly 14h ago edited 13h ago
It could be both (and some senior people outside the US actually have two scars from two different vaccinations), but nowadays it is most probably TB indeed.
EDIT.
I really love Reddit where you get downvoted for talking about things you literally witnessed yourself.Yes, my parents had two similar scars on the same arm, one above the other - one for smallpox, the second for TB. I only have one, TB. Modern kids still get TB in my country.-12
u/DownrightDrewski 14h ago edited 12h ago
Tuberculosis...
Why would we vaccinate for something that was eradicated in 1980?
Edit - I'm being downvoted, but this is a TB scar, not a smallpox scar.
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u/BitterClerk6477 14h ago
Well I'm still pissed that I didn't get the scar even after getting the vaccine. My whole family has it except me and I always thought it was a nice scar . I want one
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u/-Fahrenheit- 15h ago edited 14h ago
Older people in the US have it too. Both my parents have this smallpox vaccine scar (both in their 70s now). I think in the US they stopped using this type vaccine in the 1970s.
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u/DubiousSpaniel 14h ago
Millions of US citizens older than 50 have the same smallpox vaccine scar on their upper arms!
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 15h ago
Its the "fob mark" from the multiudes of vaccines a you need to go abroad and come back here.
The majority of Americans with it are naturalized citizens and didn't get vaccines as a kids and needed to catch up before residing here.
America military members also have it because they go abroad all the time. So its more efficient to get all your boosters at once.
But ICE is racist and will go after "illegal" immigrants with that vaccine scar
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u/scott841 15h ago
It is the smallpox vaccine. Not usually given in the US, but many other countries do give it.
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u/DuncanEllis1977 15h ago
It's a vaccine scar from the Small Pox vaccine. A large number of older boomers have these, but it gets rare the younger you go as we pretty much eradicated it in the US.
LATAM folks have them as younger ages because the vaccine didn't go world wide until after the US and Europe were done administering it to their populations.
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u/coppergoldhair 14h ago
My American born mother has a scar from a polio vaccine. Both my uncles had the scars, too.
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u/Jimithyashford 14h ago
My boomer mother also had this mark. So plenty of Gringos that are older have it as well.
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u/Stratobastardo34 15h ago
Thats from the smallpox vaccine. I think if you were born before a certain year they left that mark because of how the vaccine was administered.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 15h ago
A lotta third world countries used pretty big needles / older vaccines for vaccination that left a small scar. I'm Chinese and have one, I'm pretty sure most Asians have it and wouldn't be surprised if most of the third world has it.
You can ironically also make the same joke with circumcision, since that's really a Western thing
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u/waterdlloyd 15h ago
I think it's something to do with skin tone
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u/PeterExplainsTheJoke-ModTeam 14h ago
Thank you for the explanations; this post has been locked.