Magat grandbabies with measles.
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Roald Dahl's letter about losing his daughter to measles in 1962 ...
https://fs.blog/roald-dahl-letter-daughter/
I had measles around the same time in 1962. I was more fortunate.
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I got the measles vaccine, and either it was already the combined MMR, or I got the rubella vaccine separately, because I never had either. By the time I was pregnant with my first, my immunity had waned, according to a routine rubella immunity test. It was too late to get revaccinated for that pregnancy, so I did that later. Then, to be admitted to grad school in 2012, I had to redo several of my shots and get some that hadn't been available to me as a kid.
I wonder if some portion of the collective memory that measles weren't such a big deal is that people are confusing actual measles, which our parents' generation called "red measles" with rubella, which they called "German measles."
I did have chicken pox and mumps. My older two got chicken pox just before the vaccine was available. Muffin never had them. None of them had mumps.
I know I'm not alone here in being so grateful that vaccines were available and we got them and were able to get them for our children. I feel so bad for the children who are suffering.
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@Mary-Anna I had measles, mumps, and chicken pox, but not German measles. The vaccine came out right around the time I hit puberty and I was vaccinated for rubella then.
I wonder if the lack of collective memory is because it was a long time ago (longer for some of us than others!), we were kids and kids aren't always aware of stuff like that, and also that serious illness with measles doesn't happen, relatively speaking, that often.
The tragedy is that the cases like Dahl's daughter are now preventable because the vaccine is available and it isn't being taken advantage of.
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Bill Cassidy, the Republican US senator, has said his home state of Louisiana’s recent decision to cancel the promotion of mass vaccination against preventable diseases is a disservice to parents who want to keep their children healthy.
Nonetheless, before those remarks, the medical doctor-turned-politician who has clashed with Donald Trump joined 51 of his fellow Republicans in voting to confirm anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US’s health and human services department. Cassidy had also previously voted to advance Trump’s nomination of Kennedy as national health secretary from the committee level to the full Senate.
Louisiana, which Cassidy has represented in the Senate since 2015, made national headlines on Thursday when its surgeon general, Ralph Abraham, announced that the state’s health department would “no longer promote mass vaccination”. The directive meant the state government would immediately stop using media campaigns and health fairs to promote or distribute immunization vaccines that have long been proven to be safe and effective, saying it would essentially be up to each family to weigh “the risks and benefits” on their own.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/16/louisiana-vaccines-rfk-jr
