How in the world did I ever survive?
When I was a kid, during the summer time if any kid came down with measles, mumps, or chickenpox, the mothers had a party to get all the kids together so we would ALL catch it. That way we’d be sick during the summer instead of missing school.
Yeah. I was there.
Well it’s all fun and games until someone puts their eye out. /s
FWIW, my older brother nearly died from complications after getting the Mumps when he was 12 years old - meningitis. The doctors thought he wouldn’t live and if he did he would be severely brain damaged, the priest was called and my brother was given last rites. He did live and eventually recovered fully, but that was after spending nearly two months in the hospital and slowly learning how to speak, walk and feed himself again. I have photos of my brother holding me as an infant shortly before he got sick and photos of my brother right after he came home from the hospital – he didn’t look like the same person. My parents made sure that I got all my vaccinations; they never wanted me to go through what my brother went through.
And FWIW, while back when in the day, many kids got the measles, mumps and the chicken pox and recovered with no lasting side effects, but the mumps can cause lifelong irreversible sterility in males, the measles can kill (I knew a kid who got the measles and nearly died from the high fever, she only lived because she was plunged into an ice bath and missed two months of school) and the measles can cause serious birth defects if a pregnant woman is exposed to it, even if she has been vaccinated, and people who were purposely exposed to the chicken pox as children by their well meaning but ignorant parents, can one day thank their probably now long deceased parents for doing them that great summertime favor while they suffer from an excruciatingly painful and debilitating case of the shingles.