I'll probably catch it for this, but oh for the days where childhood diseases were caught as children and inparted better immunity.
Exactly. Things are too sterile nowadays. I had the Big Four: Measles, Mumps, Rubella and Chickenpox.
When I was little there were over 500,000 cases of Measles per year. Now the CDC is in a tizzy over 34?
I'm on your side, MM... Kids nowadays get so many vaccinations for illnesses that were considered normal childhood illnesses. I know two children with autism and have read enough about it to think there may be a correlation between that and the thimerosol preservative in vaccinations.
From this link....
Children usually do not die directly of measles, but from its complications. Complications are more common in children under the age of five or adults over the age of 20.
Which is apparently less likely in a well-nourished and healthy population, but why risk it? :)
I had it as a kid and that is the sickest I have ever been, had to stay in a dark room.
No doubt there are both advantages and disadvantages to vaccination in general, but it's not automatically true that contracting diseases in childhood confers a net benefit. Regular measles can cause brain damage, mumps can cause meningitis, deafness, and other serious problems, and German measles, though fairly mild even in an adult, causes birth defects and miscarriage (the unvaccinated girl discussed in this article had reached childbearing age without having these diseases). Some of these diseases are much more severe if contracted in adulthood. And then there's sneaky chickenpox, which tends to lie dormant for decades after a childhood infection, and then pop up in old age as painful shingles (sometimes with permanent nerve damage).
Then again, I have a cousin who was "normal" before catching measles as a toddler, but the disease left her mentally retarded. I also had a classmate who was in braces due to polio.
Oh for the days when half of all little kids died before their 5th birthday (which is still the norm in most of the world). No thanks -- I'll take a vaccines instead.
Life can never be made risk free, pain free, illness free, or death free.
I am all for people getting to choose whether or not to vaccinate themselves or their children.
A lot of children used to die from polio, diptheria and whooping cough (pertussis). Are those the good old days you a yearning for?