Well, it's closer to 74 now than simply 2. Your average 40-50 year old has likely had fewer vaccinations than your average 4-5 year old. They may even have surpassed you on their first visit to the doctor (they can give up to 6-7 shots in a visit).
The first two places I lived growing up, I had plenty of friends in the neighborhood. The third was more remote, it was a house that sat on a few acres of land. The neighborhood didn't have any other kids, so most of my friends were in school. I have good memories of high school for the most part, but that was a combo of good friends plus some truly excellent teachers. I would not call school "the best days of my life," though I certainly had some good experiences. A fair amount of negative experiences, too.
Having said that, no reason someone homeschooled can't have friends, or be involved in extra curricular activities. In some areas, there are even hybrid charter schools that cater to this sort of thing. After finding resources like the Ray Peat Forum, I think any learning I've done on my own at home has far surpassed that which I did in college. For more basic skills (reading, writing, typing, math, etc), don't really know, school was pretty good for all that. Though this was in the days before Common Core.
i agree with much of what you said. but I don't think it's that many vaccines that are required for school. there's certain ones, like mmr, tetanus, and others. but influenza shots and other more obscure ones arnt required as of yet.
I think there's a certain innocence in childhood which makes that time period much more exihlerating than adulthood. I too learned much more on my own, through ray peat, the people on this forum, then my time at university. but with that comes a bit of isolation. i've definitly become isolated the more i learned, although i still have a core group of people in close with. with a certain amount of knowledge about the food, the degeneration of everyone around you, it's hard to go out with the same attitude that kids have. i could be out all day exploring as a kid because i would just eat mcdonald's and not have to think. i quite enjoyed the ignorance of childhood for what it was worth, but i certainly wouldn't want to be ignorant now. and to a large extent there's no opportunity for ignorance because health problems create suffering, and suffering motivates one to learn and try to fix the problem, which opens up the rabbit hole of information.