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Comment by phendrenad2 | Hacker News Reader

How does one know if they're vaccinated or not? Who has a complete medical transcript going back to their childhood? How do they even get the vaccination rate data? I call BS.

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In general, if your primary care doctor doesn't have it, try your high school. If they don't, try your pediatrician. (Or your parents, potentially.)

We're really bad about centralized health data in the US, but schools keep track of immunization data. How long they retain your records will no doubt vary.

In my state (NC) there's a statewide database that physicians report immunizations to. Prior to its creation in 2005, county health departments were a good source for immunization records (they typically handle immunizations done in schools, IIRC).

If you have a surviving birth certificate, there's no reason it's not also very feasible to have a surviving immunization record. In my case, when I moved out of the house after high school my mom sent me with a photocopy of the original (handwritten) booklet. I still have the photocopy, along with additional records for vaccines I've gotten since then. This does remind me that I should digitize them.

Somehow amazing to me that I've lived across three continents and proven vaccination status numerous times and someone can't even do it within their own country.

> How does one know if they're vaccinated or not?

Ask your doctor. If it isn’t in your records, an antibody titer blood test is definitive. For public health purposes, these data have been collected for a long time.

The tests are more time consuming and expensive than just getting a new MMR vaccine. If you were vaccinated, then there will be no effect because your immune system will kill the live virus in the vaccine. If you weren't, then you are going to need the vaccine when your tests come back anyway.

Plus in some places (like California) you can get a free MMR vaccine at pharmacies like CVS, without making a doctor appointment.

I am confused... Everyone I know has a complete vaccination transcript going back to birth. I have passed through 3 different national systems (one of them being the US, where the records are not kept at a national level), and all these places have records up to the time I left them. I did not do anything special for that - it was almost automatic, except for once when I had to pay for a cheap language translation.

I know I’m up to date and more with all sorts of vaccinations like Yellow Fever and boosters in adulthood. But I’m not sure how much I could prove with documents in hand (basically whatever is in my WHO booklet ). But that’s very incomplete, primary care may have some others, but childhood records are long gone with a doubtless long dead pediatrician. This is in the US.

ADDED: So, no, as someone born 1960ish I would probably have to get a test to prove I was vaccinated against all the standard diseases.

Have you transferred doctors within the US? I think that's where the chain breaks down, since as you mention there is no national system.

Not only that, but a lot of doctors only keep records for so long. We recently had a measles outbreak in my area and I was trying to figure out if I had been vaccinated or not. My childhood doctor had destroyed the records after ten years and my parents had zero paperwork. I ended up just getting a round of the vaccine to be safe.

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