Measles … I don’t understand!

[dol1]

Dd has had the vaccine at 12 months. I’ve been watching news and there is apparently a ‘surge’ in cases now. The second vaccine for it isn’t until she’s 3… does this mean she could well get measles between now and then?

Measles is a nasty illness that can have some horrible, lifelong side effects. In rare cases it can kill. Roald Dahl campaigned long and hard for the measles vaccine after his daughter died from measles. It can also cause encephalitis (inflammation of the brain, which can lead to permanent brain damage). Other common complications are bad eyesight (including blindness) and varying degrees of deafness. In order to try and prevent the former, children had to lie in a darkened room for up to a week. We paid for our daughter to have separate measles and rubella vaccines. I think the measles parties remembered by some might have been German Measles parties (rubella was commonly known as German Measles until relatively recently) and it has been well known for decades that if a pregnant woman
catches it in the first trimester it can have devastating consequences for the unborn baby.
OP, you have done exactly the right thing by getting your child vaccinated and they should be completely protected.

MMR is an essential immunsation. Measles is bloody nasty (and dangerous), mumps is horribly painful and can render you infertile, and Rubella, whilst milder, is dangerous to an unborn foetus. The link forged between this vaccine and autism was roundly disproven and I suspect it's that, together with the conspiracy theorists, which have led to a downturn in take-up rates.

Chicken pox is another matter, albeit all diseases are unfortunately dangerous for a small minority of children. It's not offered as standard and I opted not to obtain that one. It doesn't offer lifelong protection and generally the older you are when you get it, the nastier it can be. That wasn't one I wanted to kick down the road as far as DC was concerned.

I did obtain every menigitis one that was available, including the one which wasn't offered as standard until DC was just above the age threshold.

Your DC will be protected until the second dose, albeit nothing is guaranteed even with the vaccine.

Anti-vaxers have a lot to answer for.

I think you're confusing measles with chicken pox. Measles is much more serious than that and the measles vaccine has been routine for many, many years now. Most people who are now in their 50s and 60s had the measles jab as a child, and prior to that kids with measles were kept away from other children to stop it spreading.

My father, now in his 80s, had measles as a toddler, in London, during the war. He wasn't allowed into the public bomb shelter while he had it. Those are the kinds of lengths people went to in order to stop the spread of measles. They didn't invite their kids round for fucking measles parties.

I had measles as a child myself, in the 1980s, when I was nine. I missed my vaccination due to a mistake made in my medical records. I wasn't immunocompromised or 'already unwell'. I was a normal, healthy kid and rarely ill. When I caught measles it absolutely flattened me. I don't think I've ever felt so ill before or since. I was pretty much bedbound for two weeks and I wasn't well enough to go to school for almost a month. It was fucking awful. One of my vivid memories of having measles was lying in bed, during the day, with the curtains closed because measles can make your eyes hurt from the light, needing a pee and becoming so dizzy that I fell over.

its not uncommon. When i started work in the NHS I showed no immunity to Rubella even though it was on my GP record that I had had it. I was given the jab (no MMR) and tested twice still showed no immunity. The procedure then was to vaccinate and test once more and if still no immunity showing, to leave it. I was warned to mention it if ever I got pregnant though, which I never did.

Measles is still a notifiable disease which is why we have very accurate data available to monitor the levels within the community.
It has been a notifiable disease from when the system was first introduced.
Conducting measles parties would probably have got you into trouble. Diagnosis would have been via a home visit by a GP who would have immediately notified public health and you would have been given strict instructions regarding isolation.
I would imagine the GPs having hissy fits at any parent conducting a party because there was a great deal of paper work involve in notification.

Within a year of having measles, my eyesight went from perfect to being short-sighted enough to need glasses. Nobody else in my family, either immediate or extended, has ever needed glasses until old age. I also only started suffering from regular headaches after I had measles.

There was definitely a view in the 60s that measles, like chicken pox was a normal childhood illness, and so while you had to keep your kids off school for two weeks if they got it, nobody really worried about their child having it. I had it and remember feeling ill with it, but no worse than chicken pox, scarlet fever or mumps. One of my brothers was very unwell with mumps - I don't think measles was a big deal for any of us, but our grandparents who lived with us were supposed to keep clear. I don't remember chicken pox parties, but the benefit of getting ill young and it going through the family were normal and common views.

My son was hospitalised with German measles because he had a febrile convulsion 3 days before the spots appeared. I asked the gp about the measles vaccination as this was before the mmr but separate measles one was available. He told me it was vital he had the vaccination as German measles is ( apart from pregnancy related issues) seen as mild and yet he was hospitalised for 3 days as they couldn't get his temperature down. He had the vaccination but when measles was going the ones he caught it too. He had 3 spots on his knee that was all. the gp said it was a perfect case of measles in a vaccinated child. He wasn't ill in the slightest but a friends child who hadn't been vaccinated was very very poorly indeed . Couldn't bear the light and was bedridden for weeks in a darkened room as she couldn't stand the light. Both children were 3 when this occurred. She was left with permanent vision problems.

I checked that person’s posts. She said she is 50 so born in 1974. I am a few years older than her. I was not aware of anybody having measles parties. My sister caught it and was unwell. There is no way that people were deliberately catching measles in the 70s. I can’t comment on earlier decades.

I also had a look at that posters’ other posts. She is a big fan of regular colonic irrigation so I’m not sure I trust her ‘medical’ advice ;-)

The party thing is wrong. It was chicken pox.

However, I had measles and I was fine - though not at the time! It didn't help that I contracted mumps at the same time! This was before MMR was available.

Anyway can we please not have this thread degrade into yet another debate about vaccination - it was about whether the first dose is enough. Which it will be.

There was still this pre vaccination belief that it was better to get the "rashy" illnesses over in childhood and that the danger was when adults caught it, which might explain why he wasn't allowed in the shelter because it would have been full of adults for whom the risk is much greater. I was there (born in 1953) and I can definitely attest that the parties happened. As I said, my parents didn't agree with them so my sibs and I never went. I remember them because in my child brain, I was missing out on parties and thought my parents were being unfair.

I’m old and remember the forced mumps and chickenpox parties. It was never the case with measles where I was, but there was (unfortunately) the odd kid around the neighbourhood who had been left anywhere from moderately to severely disabled by it though. Maybe given this, people realised it would be a real dick move? The rationale with chickenpox was better to have it and get it over with when younger, and particularly so with mumps as the view at the time was better boys got it as younger kids as if when teenager/adult it had much greater chance of leaving them sterile. People did the best with the information they had at the time, you can’t criticise that.

Pretty sure smallpox and diphtheria parties were never a thing either, had someone who did family history research and large families could be wiped out quickly. They got hold of a family bible where parents would have gone to churchyard to bury a child and by the time they got back another had gone, put on repeat. Seems they didn’t muck around as they just marched the newly deceased straight to the graveyard and there was a stash of coffins pre-made and people fighting on high rotation (it’s a hot country and this was before refrigeration which may have also added to haste in addition to wanting to try and limit spread to existing kids who hadn’t come down with it yet). Families of 15 would have most or all kids wiped out within 2 days, was horrific.

Now, of course, quarantine isn't really a thing in the same way so authors simply kill of the parents of the child hero.

These days they just call it 'self-isolation ...'

This also happened to my aunt. She needed glasses because of measles. Although other members of the family also got measles, it didn't affect their eyesight.

It's interesting what you say about headaches as well as my aunt had terrible migraines. My mum and I get migraines as well but nothing like as badly as she had them. So maybe the measles had something to do with that as well.

DM had measles when she was three. She subsequently got pneumonia, and was left with permanently damaged lungs, a condition called bronchiectasis. She was not unwell, or immuno-compromised, when she got measles. Please don’t take the risk of not vaccinating.

I promise you they didn’t. Measles was greatly feared because so many children died or were left disabled by it. There’s a tiny possibility they did have these sort of parties for rubella, which used to be known as German measles, because women who didn’t get natural immunity from the disease in childhood faced damaging an unborn child if they later caught it while pregnant (this was before the rubella vaccine was available), but nobody was trying to catch measles. I was born in the 70s when we had the vaccine as a matter of course. Measles had almost died out in this country until Andrew Wakefield came along.

@SabrinaThwaite
The vaccine was only introduced in 1968 so there was a catch up programme in schools for children born prior to that and had not had measles, so it could be you may not have had the vaccine by then.

@KreedKafer

Msybe my eyesight was worsened by measles, I’ll never know!

@BillieJ

Scarlet fever was only viewed as a ‘mild illness’ after antibiotics were available to treat it. Pre antibiotics, it was very serious - my DM was put in an isolation hospital as a toddler for several weeks and was only allowed to see her mother through the window.

23 years ago DS got measles. He was only 6 months so hadn’t even had the first jab.
DD had had the first jab, but not the second. She did not catch it from him.
Thankfully DS was fine.

DHs father caught measles as a child, before vaccines, and lost the sight in one eye.

Roald Dhals healthy eldest daughter died from measles. She was neither immunocompromised nor malnourished. She was seven when she died.

we vaccinate against measles for a reason,

I'm also that generation. I got measles aged 5 in 1960, as did my little sister, we were both fine.

I remember chicken pox parties, but not anyone trying to get measles as parents were very aware of the sight complications that it could cause. I knew at least one other person my age with sight loss because of it - and a slightly older student at my uni who had the lasting effects of having had polio as a child. It was not unknown to see children in callipers in the 60's.

measles is the single largest cause of blindness among children who are impoverished. If we can eradicate it worldwide by vaccination, we should.

I think there are some ‘recollections may vary’ going on here. I’m in my mid 70’s, and the only disease parties I am aware of for myself as a child, and my children, was for mumps! It was important for boys to contract it as it can cause issues as an adult.

Obviously, this was well before the development of the MMR vaccine. Incidentally, one of my DC’s was refused the measles vaccine due to childhood eczema, and was extremely ill when they contracted it.

We are fortunate now as a society to have access to many vaccines.

After 1 dose of mmr, it is over 90% effective, the 2nd dose helps provide immunity to another few %. They are planning to bring the 2nd MMR forward to 18 months nationally. If a child has the 1st dose between 6 and 12 months, they should have another dose at 12 months and then another dose, so 3 doses total (so if you have a missing dose on your record, you can have a 3rd).

You can still get breakthrough measles, if you have had 2 doses, but it is considered to be very low risk of being transmitted to others with healthy immune systems.

Measles is diagnosed in high amounts by gp's currently, all cases should recieve an oral fluid kit in the post which should be completed and returned to confirm or not.

You only need to isolate for 5 days from onset of rash for measles even if rash remains - if exposed and not immune, it can take 21 days for infection to start.

Rubella is no longer tested for antenatal now as there is very very low levels of rubella in the uk (norimported from travel to other countries with circulating rubella), so with no natural exposure immunity levels difficult to check (doesn't mean no immunity if you were exposed)

Vaccine or not she can still catch it! It just won't be as bad.
Why don't people understand this about Vaccines.

Who advised this? Certainly wouldn’t have been an nhs professional as they promote the U.K. childhood immunisations schedule