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Yes, when you consider that between 1953 and 1962, the population of children in the U.S. grew from 52 to 67 million. So it makes sense that very few kids would know anyone who died from measles.
The post you quoted was my response to someone else. I'm glad you have such a complete memory from 1960 when you were 7. I didn't say everyone treated measles as if it were a joke, but many seem to think it was just time off from school eating favorite foods and watching TV.
I could find an article from 1960 about measles and many people would say it doesn't apply to their case. You were allowed to go out. Someone else's hearing loss was blamed on them going out too soon. That's an old wives tale. There was nothing that could be done to prevent this stuff, so people just came up with stuff like "don't go outside", "wear sunglasses", "eat this", "drink that", "no baths" (I've heard that some places), etc.
Yes, people who didn't know what else to do latched onto anything they could. I do remember my head hurting so badly that the dark was comforting to me the first few days. Of course, once my head stopped hurting so much, I got impatient with being in the dark.
Now we do know what to do, and most people do it.
Also, it's not clear to me that posters here are properly distinguishing between rubeola and rubella. Rubeola was awful. Rubella, not so much, IME.
This thread is getting curioser and curiouser. That's sort of like how actual scientists once thought that polio was related to ice cream consumption because the incidence of both went up in the summer. Good grief, don't you think we've learned anything since 1932, 87 years now?
The study was on the death rate from measles, not the rate at which measles was contracted. The study found that children who already had measles who were treated with vitamin D (and A) had a lower death rate than children not treated with those supplements.
So you don't believe that vitamin D deficiency affects the immune system, and that therefore supplementing with vitamin D would improve outcomes of a disease like measles?
I asked the husband because he is 12 years older than I am & as he was born in 1956; he got to get the Measles. He was kept home & got a lot of soup & grilled cheese sandwiches. He got a rash & got better.
Dad got to get the measles too. His mom fussed over him, he got a rash & got better.
I'm literally jealous. Not because I want to be fussed over & eat a ton of grilled-cheese but because only having had the actual measles can protect you from all the new strains that 'that which cannot be discussed' has allowed to proliferate.
And these new strains DO seem to be a bit more dangerous; yet only the people who got to get the measles seem to be unfazed by it.
New measles viruses are found, but there are not many of them.
Nineteen genotypes have been detected since 1990 and an additional six during 2014. That which cannot be discussed protects against all of them.
Interesting that the two medical professionals on here BOTH are old enough to have had measles as children. Not DEAD decades later. What disabilities do THEY themselves have today? This is true for the MAJORITY of those of we elderly now who had all those childhood diseases. How many people died from our latest measles outbreak of 1,300? NONE.
All living beings, animal or human, will die at some point. MEDICINE cannot and will not prevent DEATH, as much as THEY think they can.
The goal is not to prevent death but to alter the timing. Most of us do not want to outlive our children.
The children who died from measles never got to grow old, so they are not represented among the elderly.
I was born in 1947, to a middle-class family in a small town in western Pennsylvania. I'm the oldest of four children. We all contracted the usual childhood diseases, but I have no memory of being sick, except for having scarlet fever and not being allowed to go out and play with the other kids in the neighborhood.
My point is, having those diseases was completely unmemorable. It was just accepted that everyone got them at one time or another.
We knew of very few children in our town who died: one was hit by a car, one got meningitis in high school, and one baby died of pneumonia.
We did not have the healthy food lifestyle that so many other posters here seem to recall. We ate sugary cereals for breakfast, Campbell's soup and bologna sandwiches for lunch, tried to avoid eating the vegetables my mother always cooked with our meat-centered dinner. We drank soda with our dinner.
I don't think any of the healthy food lifestyles we recall are much different than yours.
For me, Rice Krispies or scrambled eggs for breakfast. {that's all I liked} Bologna sandwiches for lunch, yes, almost every day. Dinner just the same as yours except for the soda, we always had milk with our meals. Snacks were an apple or an orange or some grapes, etc. Sometimes we had cake, pie, cookies, potato chips, etc., but they were treats doled out sparingly. It wasn't until high school that pop came onto the scene and I loved it, but I still drank a glass of milk with meals.
The things we rarely ate that are common today: fast food and fried greasy food. Mom took us to McDonald's 3 or 4 times a year if that. Dairy Queen, a few times in the summer.
What we considered a healthy diet back in the day wouldn't be considered that healthy today but we were pretty damn healthy weren't we?
The study was on the death rate from measles, not the rate at which measles was contracted. The study found that children who already had measles who were treated with vitamin D (and A) had a lower death rate than children not treated with those supplements.
So you don't believe that vitamin D deficiency affects the immune system, and that therefore supplementing with vitamin D would improve outcomes of a disease like measles?
"Good grief," indeed.
It's a little hard to tell from the snippet quoted. And the source is 87 years old! That was more my point than anything else. I've never heard of Vitamin D supplementation for treating measles. If you have anything current, say in the last 10 years, I'd be interested in seeing it. The poster I responded to seems to think that everything WRT measles is Vitamin related.
Another one with a measles memory from 60+ years ago! How do you know, as a child, what your mother/father feared or didn't fear? Measles was scary, regardless of how many people on here post that their parents thought it was all a big joke. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480406/ "One vivid account of measles describes the disease’s deadly spread through a prominent Boston household >300 years ago. In 1713, America’s first important medical figure (3), Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663–1728), called by one authority “the Dr. Spock of the colonial New England” (4), wrote about a measles epidemic in the American colonies, describing not only its epidemiology and devastation but also the fear it elicited."
Not exactly a party.
I just noticed this rude and insulting post that was aimed at me. You want to interrogate me?
Believe it or not, a child of seven can speak and understand. A child can also sense their own mother's fear.
If you really need to know 100 percent, without a doubt, it's because my mother EXPLAINED it to me and also because I could see the look on her face when she was telling me. She would also use words that I understood like "scary" and "dangerous." I can also remember the fear in her voice when she read from the newspaper about the anniversary of the devastating circus fire in Hartford, CT in 1944. I didn't know how to read yet but she showed me the newspaper picture of the little girl whose body was found but never identified. It was chilling. It still is upsetting to me. She told me what happened and I remember. I remember so well that years later I looked it up and it is now called "The Day the Clowns Cried." It made quite an impression on me. People do remember things.
I don't know why you won't believe people. Just because you can't remember back to parts of your childhood, doesn't mean that some other people can't remember.
Again, I remember my mother telling me how horrible whooping cough was and that babies died from it. She told me that on the day when, age five, I got my vaccinations to go to school. It was her way of making me grateful that I could get vaccinated, helping me to be unafraid of the vaccination and glad to be getting it. I didn't have to be like the poor kids back in her day who got sick and died. She told me about smallpox that day too.
Because of her telling me and explaining to me about the old diseases that kids used to get, I was not afraid to get my vaccination when I was five years old. It was given at the school I would be attending for kindergarten. See? I remember. I do not literally remember getting the vaccination but I remember going to get it and I remember WHY I got it. I remember the raised scab on my arm from it and my mother checking the scab and telling me to leave it alone and that it would fall off. To me it felt like a badge of some sort because she prepared me so well and told me how dangerous it used to be for kids before there were vaccinations.
I can tell you about being taken out in my baby carriage and some little old ladies cooing over me, that it was cold out and that I had something pink around my head, but you wouldn't believe that either. This thread is supposed to be about measles. We can have a separate thread about childhood memories if that's what you want. Just because you don't seem to have any childhood memories, doesn't mean that other people don't. Also, just because we are now over a "certain age" doesn't mean that we are senile and unable to remember.
I know enough about smallpox, thank you very much. Edward Jenner too. I can read, believe it or not.
Of course, it was the parents! Parents today, bad! Boomer parents, badder! No, it wasn't like the bold. You don't remember because you were a KID! Ask your parents if they know anyone who lost a child, and to what. Half of all kids had measles by age 6, IIRC. That's why you don't remember your classmates dying.
I'm not taking these memories of small children from 60-70 years ago seriously. You're wanting to diss vaccines, but no one else is supposed to use the "V" word. And I'll be dipped if I let you analyze my diet! We liked spaghetti, that's about all I remember. Happy now?
Stop right there. Just because most of us did not get very sick with the measles does not mean we are lying or that we are against vaccines. I am for them just for the sake of children or others who could suffer a permanent disability or death.
The OP asked for our experience with measles and that is what we are doing, let's just leave it at that as the OP requested.
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Dinner just the same as yours except for the soda, we always had milk with our meals. Snacks were an apple or an orange or some grapes, etc. Sometimes we had cake, pie, cookies, potato chips, etc., but they were treats doled out sparingly. It wasn't until high school that pop came onto the scene and I loved it, but I still drank a glass of milk with meals.
Just because most of us did not get very sick with the measles does not mean we are lying or that we are against vaccines. I am for them just for the sake of children or others who could suffer a permanent disability or death.