It makes me angsty as I am working in clinical contact with children in a hospital in an area where there is currently an outbreak, and I am also pregnant. I have been immunised against measles (and had all other routine immunisations) but nevertheless I understand that immunity isn't perfect and if I caught measles at this stage, at the very least it would be a terrifying and horrendous ordeal, and at worst could result in death of me or my baby. As it happens, I did have a large amount of contact with a child with measles very early in my pregnancy so I am reasonably confident I'm immune! It's a very infectious disease!
But nevertheless, on a daily basis the need to consider and avoid measles is a professional inconvenience that has meant an uncomfortable refusal (on my part) to see a child. I just couldn't forgive myself if my baby died of measles. And I have wondered how I would feel, how I could move on from the emotions I would feel, if something terrible did happen as a direct consequence of someone else's decision not to immunise their child.
That said, all of the parents I have known who chose not to immunise and whose child subsequently contracted measles have held deep regrets and made immediate plans to immunise their other children. I have felt mostly pity for them. I only wish the reality would sink in before bad outcome (eg: a child getting measles). Heaven knows how anyone moves on if their child is actually killed or maimed by a immunisation preventable illness.
The reality is that in a world without immunisations measles and many other serious communicable diseases would be endemic - that is almost everyone would get the disease at some point in their lifetime. In the case of measles, we would see nearly all children suffering from the disease before 15 years old (similar to chickenpox now). Subsequently, many, many people would die or be maimed by these illnesses.
I think it is useful (and sometimes has a greater impact than just statistics or facts alone) to consider anecdotes from history. I recall in my own life, my grandmother pointing out the children in her school photograph who died or were maimed by immunisation preventable illness. It is unthinkable now.
Lincoln, Garfield, and Cleveland all lost children to diphtheria. Another of Garfield's children was killed by Pertussis (whooping cough).
B Franklin lost a son to smallpox (now eradicated, by immunisation). Of immunisation (which in his time was novel, and involved the much-riskier-than-modern-immunisations method of variation) he said:
“In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of the parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.”
Roald Dahl's beloved daughter Olivia died of measles aged 7. He wrote about her death in an essay entitled "Measles: a dangerous illness". She died not long before the first measles immunisations became available.
Dahl wrote "The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now (1986) if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her".
Bill Clinton said of the Polio immunisation:
"Franklin Roosevelt spent almost half his life in a wheelchair as a result of polio. And I was part of the first generation of Americans to be immunized against polio.
And I remember, as a child, seeing other children in iron lungs. And I remember what an enormous elation it was for me and my classmates when we first got our polio vaccines, to think that that's one thing we didn't have to worry about anymore. It's hard for people now who weren't alive then and weren't part of it to even imagine what that meant to a whole generation of children."