this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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For all the circlejerk, smallpox vaccines used to leave very large scar. As if someone put out a sigarette on your shoulder. Newer versions of it no longer do this, but the older versions scar could get very ugly.
My mother has one; a little spot on her arm where her skin just, kind of wrinkles inward a little. It doesn't stand proud like a wound that scabbed over, it's sunken in.
I'm a millennial, I'm not vaccinated against smallpox, it was certified eradicated 5 years before I was born.
I know someone whose scar looks more like this
Genuinely thought someone branded them with a cig.
What the hell is that what it is? My mom has one too and I never realised that it's a vaccine scar
Smallpox vaccine was live cowpox virus which causes this scarring. It was one of the most effective vaccines.
Smallpox is a horror.
Yep that is the old vaccine. It is still used in some poorer parts of the world as well.
I haven't noticed mine in decades but we all had them growing up.
We also yearly got these pink tablets to chew that colored your teeth - darker meant you weren't doing a great job brushing your teeth.
Yeah that's exactly it. I've never seen one of those...fresh. I think they stopped using that kind of vaccine before I was born, again I never got vaccinated against smallpox, joys of being born in the 80's. Was it an open sore? Or did it just...sink in?
I remember reading that some folks (actresses, models) would get vaccinated in less conspicuous places, like the inner thigh, but now I can't find any documentation for it.
I was actually talking to my mother about her vaccine scar today. She says she had a friend who got vaccinated the same time she did. But her friends mother was super vain, so told the vaccinator guy to give her daughter the shot on her thigh, so a swim suit would cover it.
But outer thigh is lower than where bathing suits show so you saw the scar anyway, and the mother was pissed. Mother's friend didn't care though, since she was a kid.