thanks to the Incompetent Incontinent Conman. Cuts to the World Health Organization meant cuts to Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network (GMRLN). As a result, measles is spreading worldwide. I actually feel worse for the children in need elsewhere.

Since I grew up in the 1950s and early 60s - the height of the Baby Boom era - childhood diseases were a regular thing. Every schoolroom and neighborhood playground was crowded with kids. At the time it seemed we were all sharing germs with every other kid in the neighborhood. If anyone got chickenpox, we all got it eventually, and it was the same with measles.

But the big danger with measles was the high fever that accompanied the rashes and the itchy spots. My little brother must have been a toddler when one of the older sibs brought home the measles. His temperature spiked up to 104 degrees and Mom was terrified. The doctor told her over the phone to put my brother into a cold water bath and try to bring his temperature down. Bro wasn't happy about it, screamed the entire time, but that cold water bath worked. It brought his temperature back down after 15 minutes or so.

When the measles, mumps and chickenpox vaccines came out in the mid-60s, my Mom made sure we all got them.

The reason it is different then from now, is the neighborhoods and towns generally consisted of people from that town and vicinity. Their parents were from there. Their grandparents from there. Everyone had a general natural low level immunity to the various strains running around.

But now is different. People in neighborhoods, schools and towns come and go. People from around the world the world move in and out. All with different levels of immunities. I figured that out when I was young. A new guy moved in the neighborhood from ST. Louis. After his kid, a boy my age, started in the school, he got sick as a horse with the measles. No one else did. Later in the year we all got the mumps and he never had a sniffle.

Just different immunities. I think that is why measles is so dangerous now compared to before. The vaccine allowed people from different areas to live together without each other making the others sick.

That is just my thinking.

Our "community medical knowledge network" has improved greatly since the 1950's. Neighborhoods used to be stable but now there are a lot of families moving in and out.

When I was a kid we didn't even know about the danger to pregnant women being exposed to measles. (It turns out that fetal exposure to measles is a big cause of birth defects, etc.) It seemed like so many young mothers were pregnant in those days, including my own Mom who eventually had 9 kids.

It wipes out your acquired immunity from all previous diseases, leaving you susceptible to dozens of childhood diseases even if you once had immunity.

As someone who got measles, got damn sick, but survived; who remembers all too well the death of a school friend's little sister from measles, whose heart leapt with joy when measles was theoretically eradicated when I was a teenager, who, as a parent, eagerly brought my own children to their pediatrician for their measles shots when they became available, I now ache for the poor fools who "do their own research," and come to the decision not to immunize their own children. That's all.

I was one of seven children who grew up in the 50's. When one of us got something it went right down the line. We were a poor family and I can only remember going to a doctor once or twice, one of the times being when I had the measles. I look back on that memory and now realize that they must have been extremely worried about me if they took me to the doctor. I remember that there was some information that said it could affect eyesight, so the doctor gave me some little cheap sunglasses to wear and told my mother that she should put me in a dark room with the shade pulled down when we got home which she did. I rarely got any individual attention since I was the fifth of seven kids, so I felt really special since my mother actually sat next to the bed and read me a story.

When my two children were little I was damned sure they would be vaccinated with every thing that was recommended. They didn't have the chicken pox vaccination yet, so they both got the chicken pox.

At this rate, we're gonna break a record from the early 90's soon.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

She got over it fine, but not everyone does.

Vaccines are good.

--Ruth Ben-Ghiat, scholar of authoritarian regimes.

Also, the fascists want us to think that life is cheap, for a variety of reasons, including to diminish outrage when they kill us in the streets and societal pressure to spend money on healthcare for the masses.