The New Measles

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/the-new-measles/384738/

?nimxol

Measles used to be an illness everyone got.

Before vaccination became widespread in the 1960s, pediatricians knew to check their patients' throats for the spray of telltale spots. Scientists raced for decades to develop an effective vaccine. And in the meantime, newspapers printed matter-of-fact death tolls, tallying high numbers of deaths by measles, scarlet fever, smallpox, and other illnesses of the recent past.

People expected to get measles in those days, but they didn't expect to survive. Measles killed some 2.6 million people each year before vaccination was widespread, according to the World Health Organization. Today, some 145,000 people die of measles each year—most of them because they lack access to the vaccine—and just a tiny fraction of them are in the United States, where the vaccine is readily available and widely used.

Traces of measles' one-time ubiquity in the States still linger in morbid nursery rhymes ("Cat's got the measles and the measles have got you," one goes) and splotchy illustrations in old children's books and medical texts, but vaccination has changed the way people see the illness in the developed world.

Culturally, measles is rarely seen as a threat anymore in the United States—a misconception that the disease isn't as dangerous as it actually is.

[2naSalit]

1. When I was a child

my mom expected each of her children to get measles, chicken pox, and the mumps. They were considered childhood diseases and the "went around" at various times of year. I never heard of anyone dying from them back then, late 1950s, and it was just an anticipated illness. I had all of them, twice. We had a lot of kids in our family and by the time the first to get the diseases were better, there were still several who had the disease, some of us got re-infected (for lack of a better term with little coffee).

I am sure that an orthopedic issue is what will kill me but I do know that adults are at far more risk of being adversely affected by any of these diseases. Vaccines are one of those things that make me wonder if medical science has usurped the "natural selection" process to the degree that we are defeating ourselves in the long run because we fear a different aspect of the life cycle in that nobody is supposed to die, particularly in our culture... as though death should be thwarted at all costs, including the cost to all life via the demise of the biosphere due to overpopulation and depletion of "resources".

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. Same here.

I remember having the measles, and a big deal about keeping the room dark, but not that my Mom was overly worried.
I was 5-6 at the time, so early 50's then.
And in the late 60's, both my toddlers came down with chicken pox within a day of each other, tho they were too young to be in any type of school
and stayed at home with me. Have no idea where they got it.
but both Grandmas then assured me it was no big deal unless they spiked a bad fever, which they did not.
At no time was I aware that measles could kill.

The BIG fear was polio, when I was a kid.
Wasn't till I was in 3rd grade that Salk made the vaccine.

[MohRokTah]

3. As a chile I had Chicken Px, Measles, Rubella, and the Mumps.

Get vaccinated, folks. Chicken Pox nearly killed my little brother.