The town asked local health leaders to give a talk on vaccines. With new recommendations from the federal government differing from the recommendations of doctors, it can be hard to know which shot to give.

Dr. David Schneider has been a pediatrician practicing in Rutland County for decades. He looked out on a sea of his peers and neighbors on Thursday night, pondering their future. He knows the town’s past: whooping cough, chicken pox and memories of polio.

“Prior to the routine use of the vaccine, there was not a single year that went by that I was not hospitalizing very sick children with chicken pox,” said Schneider.

The four panelists-- three doctors and one family nurse practitioner-- wanted their town to understand what exactly vaccines are, so they performed a metaphorical shoestring-budget skit. They explained that vaccines introduce a person’s immune system to the general makeup of a bacteria or virus and prepare the body to fight the illness better.