It’s all fun and games and a “party” until someone develops meningitis and dies or nearly dies like my brother did in 1961 as a complication of the mumps (and meningitis and encephalitisis are also complications that can develop from having measles and chicken pox not to mention the danger they pose to pregnant women and their babies).
Let’s see - he spent several days partying in a coma, the doctors told my parents that even if he came out of it that he might have permanent brain damage, his veins started collapsing, organs started shutting down, was given Last Rites. He did recover and eventually fully recovered but that was after a two month hospital say where he had to re-learn to talk and walk and even feed himself because the meningitis left his brain pretty scrambled. He does have fond memories of wheelchair races in the hospital ward and of the tough but kind hospital administrator who was also a Catholic nun, but not so much about spending his summer once he came home, making up the two months of school work he missed so he could move on to the next grade.
I have the photos of my brother before and after and he doesn’t look like the same person. Before – healthy, an athlete, even if a bit on the chubby side, rosy cheeks – after – pale, painfully thin, it took a good year for him to get back to a normal weight and regain muscle strength.
And fortunately even just having the mumps didn’t leave him with permanent hearing damage or sterility which while very rare, can occur.
Of course most kids who get measles, mumps or chicken pox will be sick and miserable for a week or so, but for some, it can be deadly:
I did recently get a shingles vaccination in hopes I don't have to go through the discomfort in my old age...
Good for you but also good for others as a person with an active shingles outbreak can transmit full blown chicken pox to unimmunized persons.
You gave out lots of good info about the childhood diseases. I wasn’t advocating one way or another - just sayin’ how it wuz when I was a child. These days, one must weigh the cost-benefits of some vaccines and to insure they don’t cause more harm than they prevent. Way more autism/ADDS/ADDHD, etc., than I remember as a child and the cases seem to be trending more severe in nature than what we grew up hearing about. Some may be due to better communications, but that doesn’t account for all of it. I made a personal choice with the shingles vaccine and asked for and read the data sheet before I let them stick me. I’ll probably fore-go the Flu shot this year - I take one every few years or so and invariably get sicker and have it hang on longer in the years I take the shot.