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Little kid's "jobs" are learning new things. This includes their immune system learning new things. It's a big, nasty world, full of germs and they have to learn to fight it. They get some initial protection from Mom's antibodies in their blood, but that wears off in months. After that they're on their own. Fortunately God designed them well. Our immune system normally is its strongest and fastest when we're little kids; it's just untrained. The immune system can deal with more than one thing at a time. Multiple bugs at various cuts and scrapes get stomped simultaneously. Little kids are always getting sick, but most bugs they shake off quickly. Often a lot quicker and easier than if their poor Mom or Dad catch the same bug!

For some of the more dangerous bugs, ones that used to kill rather than just sicken many little kids we've been able to develop vaccines. They make the kid a little sick because training the immune system is work for them. Just like training the immune system with every "natural" cold and flu bug is. But that can't make them as sick as the real infections would. There are some rare circumstances in which vaccination won't work and rarer ones in which it can be risky, but most kids, even 'sickly' kids do fine with it. Millions of kids are getting all these vaccines, several at a time just like yours, and there is no epidemic of serious side effects. When to vaccinate is a trade off. Vaccinate too soon and you don't get as good a take; in part because left over maternal antibodies get there first and save the kid's system from having to respond. Vaccinate too late and you end up with more children catching the real disease and really getting sick. A lot of work has gone into optimizing the schedule.

There are more shots now than a generation ago because we've been clever enough to develop vaccines for more things that used to harm many children. With some vaccines we may eventually end the disease and the need for that vaccination. We accomplished that with smallpox and the first vaccine, the one with the most side effects. Smallpox and its vaccines (we have improved, safer ones now) came back in the news because atheist idiots in the old USSR may have let some escape and we can't trust their faithless denials. Polio should have been eradicated by now and that vaccination could now be stopped. One of its three types has been eradicated. But in this case pious idiots, especially in Nigeria and a few other Muslim countries, have delayed the end of polio by resisting vaccination. Progress has resumed and the battle against polio will probably still be won in a few years. Once passage of time has proved victory kids world wide can celebrate getting fewer shots! In countries, like ours, where polio has been well controlled they've switched from the stronger but riskier oral polio vaccine to the safer, but a bit weaker, injected polio vaccine. Fondly remembering my polio stricken grandfather I eagerly await polio's demise.

After polio measles is the next target for disease, and then vaccine, eradication and a lot of progress has already been made there. It used to kill millions, now this Dermatologist has only seen one case in 20+ years. Vaccinations, along with modern sanitation, are the most effective, and in spite of their higher current price tags the most cost effective, health interventions mankind has invented. If their price tags bother you complain to two groups. Secondly to the legal system parasites and primarily to overly concerned average citizens who demanded much more extensive, and expensive, safety testing. The older safety standards were much cheaper, and had produced effective vaccines with safety records that impressed the heck out of our grandparents. But society decided that child safety was worth spending even more money.