Almost all adults were immune to measles, thus no adults became sick. Other than a few kids staying home from school with their mother (who was immune), there was no reason to "shut down the nation". There was no interruption to daily business because no one in business was ill or at risk of becoming ill.
You wanted your kids to have measles between 5 and 15 years old because it was much worse as an adult. People litterally ensured their kids got the measles, even having "measles parties" when one child was infected so the rest would get it and become immune. Measles was never a massive outbreak, and at any particular time there were relatively few people infected. COVID-19 is killing more Americans every day than Measles killed in a year.
Not true