How to stay healthy when you get the measles (doctor, cancer, nurse)
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(NOTE: This is a forum where vaccines cannot be discussed. So don't bring it up.)
In another thread, Katarina Witt asked an interesting question about how people today seem to be dying from measles more than they did previously. So let's discuss how people stayed healthy in the past and can be healthy now when they get this.
According to the CDC's "Vital Statistics of the United States 1962," the death rate from measles per 100,000 people varied between 0.2~0.3 between 1953 and 1962 (figures are from page 18 of PDF file), which is approximately only 400 to 500 annual deaths (out of the three to four MILLION cases every year). Of course, the rates are likely slightly higher for young children and infants. According to Katarina, there has been a 10 fold INCREASE in deaths in almost 60 years despite "advances" in medical care.
So what was different in the years before 1963? What can we keep that was successful then to stay healthy? What new health measures can we adopt that are different?
I'd like to hear from people who had this normal childhood illness preferably pre-1963 and got through it just fine. Please don't clutter this Health and Wellness thread with doom and gloom that we hear about ad infinitum from mainstream media. We already heard; we already know.
Here is what my response was going to be:
Quote:
Good question! Most people (living in good conditions with good food) were in better health?
Parents didn't rush their kids right out to the doctor, so they stayed home, read books and played board games and enjoyed themselves until they got better?
Perhaps "advanced health care" isn't all that advanced or necessary when dealing with measles? Or being treated at the hospital for measles has a better chance of killing you than being at home eating soup with mom watching over you?
In 1962, children 19 and under were far more likely to due from these issues than from measles (numbers are from approximately page 150 onward in the CDC's PDF):
Accidents, poisonings and violence:
24,475
Diseases of the digestive system:
5,717
Malignant neoplasms (cancer, tumors):
5,607
Diseases of the nervous system and sense organs:
4531
(NOTE: This is a forum where vaccines cannot be discussed. So don't bring it up.)
In another thread, Katarina Witt asked an interesting question about how people today seem to be dying from measles more than they did previously. So let's discuss how people stayed healthy in the past and can be healthy now when they get this.
According to the CDC's "Vital Statistics of the United States 1962," the death rate from measles per 100,000 people varied between 0.2~0.3 between 1953 and 1962 (figures are from page 18 of PDF file), which is approximately only 400 to 500 annual deaths (out of the three to four MILLION cases every year). Of course, the rates are likely slightly higher for young children and infants. According to Katarina, there has been a 10 fold INCREASE in deaths in almost 60 years despite "advances" in medical care.
So what was different in the years before 1963? What can we keep that was successful then to stay healthy? What new health measures can we adopt that are different?
I'd like to hear from people who had this normal childhood illness preferably pre-1963 and got through it just fine. Please don't clutter this Health and Wellness thread with doom and gloom that we hear about ad infinitum from mainstream media. We already heard; we already know.
Here is what my response was going to be:
Part of it may be an artifact of reporting. It is possible more people died from complications due to measles in the past than was recorded, but they didn't happen to seek supportive care, supportive care wasn't available, or they weren't accurately diagnosed. Statistical records aren't perfect.
The more recent deaths from measles that I think the poster you refer to in the op was referring to were happening in Europe and the majority of which, in countries experiencing war and high rates of poverty like Ukraine, Albania, etc. You really can’t compare 1960 USA to current conditions in places like Ukraine.
Okay, I had the measles as a kid and I'll play. When I was a kid everybody got the measles, like a rite of passage.
I came home from school feeling sweaty and horrible.
Was put to bed and the doctor was called. Dr came and said I had the measles. Instructions: keep the window shades pulled down--keep the room darkened. Do not go out until (cannot remember the instructions but I had to stay home for quite a long time.) I never got out of bed for at least a week and my food was brought to me . Since I was not supposed to use my eyes, people took turns reading to me. Neighbors sent more books for me. No medicine, no special foods. I listened to the radio and it got pretty boring after a while. My mother kept me well terrified by telling me of a kid she knew who went back to school too soon and partially lost her hearing as a result.
(Most childhood illnesses were treated with bed rest and a pile of blankets, regular meals.)
(NOTE: This is a forum where vaccines cannot be discussed. So don't bring it up.)
In another thread, Katarina Witt asked an interesting question about how people today seem to be dying from measles more than they did previously. So let's discuss how people stayed healthy in the past and can be healthy now when they get this.
According to the CDC's "Vital Statistics of the United States 1962," the death rate from measles per 100,000 people varied between 0.2~0.3 between 1953 and 1962 (figures are from page 18 of PDF file), which is approximately only 400 to 500 annual deaths (out of the three to four MILLION cases every year). Of course, the rates are likely slightly higher for young children and infants. According to Katarina, there has been a 10 fold INCREASE in deaths in almost 60 years despite "advances" in medical care.
So what was different in the years before 1963? What can we keep that was successful then to stay healthy? What new health measures can we adopt that are different?
I'd like to hear from people who had this normal childhood illness preferably pre-1963 and got through it just fine. Please don't clutter this Health and Wellness thread with doom and gloom that we hear about ad infinitum from mainstream media. We already heard; we already know.
Here is what my response was going to be:
No, that is not the question I asked. In the decade before the vaccine, there were ~500,000 cases of measles reported to the CDC in the US each year, and ~500 reported deaths from measles each year, about 1 death per thousand cases. It has actually been estimated by the CDC that there were probably 3,000,000 - 4,000,000 cases of measles each year. The CDC has no estimates of actual deaths. Some people who are trying to prove that measles is a mild disease say that means there were about 1 death per 10,000 cases. This of course, is untrue. We do not have an estimate for how many deaths there might have been. The decade before the vaccine was 1953-1963. We did not have EHR then, we didn't even have hand-held calculators. Everything had to be done by hand, and reports mailed to the CDC. We also didn't have as robust of disease investigation then. Some deaths may have been recorded as "pneumonia" (the leading cause of death from measles), encephalitis, and other causes.
Nor did I EVER say there has been a 10-fold increase in deaths in almost 60 years. I said that last year in Europe, a continent with UHC in virtually every country (I don't personally know of one country there that doesn't have UCH) there were 84,000 measles cases and 72 deaths, approximately 1 in 1000 cases. In point of fact, in the big measles epidemic of 1989-91 in the US, when we were about halfway between 1963 and now, there were about 55,467 cases and 161 deaths. That is about 3 deaths per thousand cases. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00017268.htm
I got measles at age 6 1/2, in first grade. I came home from school and showed my mother the rash. She called the doctor, and asked if she needed a quarnatine sign, which she did in her days as a public health nurse before she got married. I don't remember another thing. I missed three weeks of school, verified from my report card.
I don't think anyone thought of measles as a "rite of passage". A right of passage implies some privileges after the passage. The only thing you got from measles was being able to be around someone with measles without getting sick. I think parents did see measles as inevitable. That does not mean they welcomed them.
I got measles at age 6 1/2, in first grade. I came home from school and showed my mother the rash. She called the doctor, and asked if she needed a quarnatine sign, which she did in her days as a public health nurse before she got married. I don't remember another thing. I missed three weeks of school, verified from my report card.
I don't think anyone thought of measles as a "rite of passage". A right of passage implies some privileges after the passage. The only thing you got from measles was being able to be around someone with measles without getting sick. I think parents did see measles as inevitable. That does not mean they welcomed them.
Yeh, the rite of passage just meant that you'd been there, just like everyone else in those days and now it was over with and you were free.
BTW, I used to think most kids got measles in their first years of school. It would go around the classroom and everyone you knew had the measles at about the same time. (I got it when I was 7.)
But I was looking through an old scrapbook and my cousin's mom had written that my cousin got the measles when she was two! AND that she got a vaccination for it afterwards. This would have been 1946. I just thought that was kind of strange. Getting it at age two and--a vaccination of some sort?
Yeh, the rite of passage just meant that you'd been there, just like everyone else in those days and now it was over with and you were free.
BTW, I used to think most kids got measles in their first years of school. It would go around the classroom and everyone you knew had the measles at about the same time. (I got it when I was 7.)
But I was looking through an old scrapbook and my cousin's mom had written that my cousin got the measles when she was two! AND that she got a vaccination for it afterwards. This would have been 1946. I just thought that was kind of strange. Getting it at age two and--a vaccination of some sort?
About 50% of kids got measles by the time they were 6, IIRC. There was no measles vaccine in 1946; it came out in 1963.
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. Since I was not supposed to use my eyes, people took turns reading to me. Neighbors sent more books for me. No medicine, no special foods. I listened to the radio and it got pretty boring after a while. My mother kept me well terrified by telling me of a kid she knew who went back to school too soon and partially lost her hearing as a result. 