Measles

... is back and spreading. Luckily ,for most of us, "those that were born before 1957 are considered immune, because, largely everyone was infected at that time, when vaccines were not available".

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/02/12/do-need-measles-booster-adult-vaccine-questions-answered/2846268002/

What I find most tragicomical, is that a nation that is almost defined by it's herd behaviour, should have so much difficulty with the concept of herd immunity.

I remember being taken to visit a friend with measles in order to get it. Old fashioned immunization!!

That's the way my mum did it too. I got to visit all my friends who were sick with measles, chicken pox, etc. and got measles, chicken pox etc.
I wonder, though, if we also had somewhat of a kickstart from our mothers who had also been exposed. The so called "childhood" diseases then seemed to be of a milder variety than exists now. Or perhaps our immune systems were already stronger because we weren't kept in such sterile germ free environments.

ferret wrote:That's the way my mum did it too. I got to visit all my friends who were sick with measles, chicken pox, etc. and got measles, chicken pox etc.
I wonder, though, if we also had somewhat of a kickstart from our mothers who had also been exposed. The so called "childhood" diseases then seemed to be of a milder variety than exists now. Or perhaps our immune systems were already stronger because we weren't kept in such sterile germ free environments.

From a pediatrician I knew: "she lies at my feet on a sterilized sheet cutting teeth on the tip of my shoe".

ferret wrote:That's the way my mum did it too. I got to visit all my friends who were sick with measles, chicken pox, etc. and got measles, chicken pox etc.
I wonder, though, if we also had somewhat of a kickstart from our mothers who had also been exposed. The so called "childhood" diseases then seemed to be of a milder variety than exists now. Or perhaps our immune systems were already stronger because we weren't kept in such sterile germ free environments.

From a pediatrician I knew: "she lies at my feet on a sterilized sheet cutting teeth on the tip of my shoe".

Canada_Mike wrote:I remember being taken to visit a friend with measles  in order to get it. Old fashioned immunization!!

Yep. Mom made it sound like a party.

Gringal, You got it. My mother a geriatric and nut bar Registered Nurse, her specialities, out of Eastern Ontario, escaping "the FARM", in 1929. I have an image of her brother taking her off to that experience in his motorcycle sidecar. She GOT immunization by dirt. 1956, I drank out of a ditch in Rexdale, a suburb of TO, adjacent to our spiffy new post war subdivision. Now, maybe not so much. I found a little can, kind of cleaned it off, and drank from it. Dirt got ugly since then.

Let’s not forget that the increases in man’s longevity is more due to improvements in public sanitation than medical discoveries.