Do you remember measles and polio?

[Dilbertian]

I remember the children's lido at the park being shut for several months because of polio, and either my class or the whole infant school being shut for several weeks because of measles. Children with measles were quarantined at home, as were their siblings and any friends they had played with just before becoming ill.

This is what living with covid is going to be like. We will take the precautions we can, and respond to infection spikes. We now have 2 or 3 generations of adults who grew up with very little dangerous infectious disease around them. What they think is abnormal, or the new normal, is normal. This is what was normal for their parents and grandparents.

The problem with Covid is it is doesn't look look like a once per person illness. It's looking like like we can catch up it multiple times whichever is very worrying.

I had Measles, German Measles and mumps as a child in the 70s. It was accepted that children would catch these diseases and little was made of it. Oddly, I seem to remember being told that I didn't have them badly because I'd been vaccinated. I only remember being vaccinated after I'd already had the diseases. I remember calipers, the collecting box with the little girl, the fear of polio, the fear of scarlet fever and also TB and hepatitis (one parent nor born in the UK).

I had mumps and German measles in the 1970s, and I know that at least one family member died of diptheria in the 1920s.

I had measles (and German measles, mumps and chicken pox) as a child - before there were vaccinations for those. I am unscathed but was delighted to be able to vaccinate my child against these horrible diseases.

I had the lot in my first year of primary school - I was never there!

Dm was terrified of polio and even after the vaccination avoided Woolworths and the cinema which according to her were hotbeds of infection...

My mum b. 1940 had polio. 3 kids in her village got it; one died, one became a wheelchair user and mum, who spent a year in various hospitals and was finally able to walk, sometimes with much pain and difficulty.
Horrible bloody disease.

My grandfather was disabled by Polio. He walked with a limp and lost the use of his right arm so I was always very aware of it.

I had mumps, German measles in the 70's as a small child and I was very ill. I met a mum at a toddler group and her baby was blind from Measles 😰

I had measles shortly after being born.
I got mumps at the age of 3 and still remember that. It was awful. I also had whooping cough a few years ago and that spread through the family including my 75 year old Mum. She recovered but it took a long time. The hospital didn’t even recognise it when I had it and sent me home with an inhaler. Maybe they’re just not used to seeing old illnesses like that!

I remember measles. We all had it, no one turned a hair.

I don't remember polio though.

I had measles and mumps while very young; they think now measles affected my eyes.
My godfather had polio and it completely destroyed his life. I remember a colleague who had an older brother who had polio too.
I knew a boy who got German measles and lost hearing in one ear. I also know a man sterile because of mumps.
Am I wrong in thinking that although the numbers will be much lower, Covid can still affect children and perhaps affect them in ways that we dont fully understand? I know two mid-30s women who got Covid and are dealing with constant lung problems since; neither has returned to normal life. It's the unpredictability of Covid that scares me.

For measles, mumps etc I do think those were like Covid is going to be - most children had them, and for most people it wasn't serious but for the odd person it resulted in long term harm (blindness, infertility etc) or even death. Polio was always serious, like Diptheria and other stuff we've forgotten was common.

Even when I was a child most classes/groups/families had experience of child deaths, often for things sorted with a dose of antibiotics now, and any child with a disability was very likely to end up in an institution and to die young. Also adults died a lot younger.

I remember being very ill with something - Mumps I think - hallucinating and being roasting hot. The Doctor did a home visit, looked through the door, told mum to keep me tucked up warm in bed, let me drink as much squash as I wanted, and to take aspirin. I hoped for Lucozade but that was considered too much of a luxury for us!

I do family research and one of my great great aunts lost 5 of her 8 children to a diphteria epidemic one year.

Polio was a mild disease for many, asymptomatic for quite a lot of people.

But it had appalling consequences for the unlucky ones.

So perhaps it's a reasonable comparator for Covid (which does strike some people more severely, including younger ones, not necessarily leading to death but to a much longer illness and long term effects still not known)

I had measles in the 1960s, straightforward mild case with no lasting damage. I was too young to know what public health precautions were taken. The polio vaccine existed by then (oral version on sugar lump) so I don't remember the precautions around that either.

porcupine
yes, I questioned "polio scars" because I've met a LOT of polio survivors and scars are /were not a common factor

FFS
Malaria kills over 400,000 a year every year
AIDS still kills tens of thousands every year

if COVID shakes us out of our complacency to realise that climate change will bring Malaria to central London
GOOD

I was born in the 1950’s and remember being fascinated by a polio patient in an iron lung in my hospital physio dept when I was 4 years old and attending with a broken arm.
I suffered measles, Rubella and chicken pox as a child, and mumps as an adult. I was one of the last kids to get the injection of killed polio vaccine before they introduced the live attenuated oral vaccine on a sugar cube.
I was vaccinated against smallpox when we had a “scare” - an outbreak in London.
As a medical student in the 1970’s I recall visiting a large grim institution with hundreds of children who’d been damaged by Rubella in utero - they were blind, deaf and brain damaged, it was heartbreaking.
You can perhaps understand why anti vaxxers drive me to fury!

I certainly had measles, but I rubella, chicken pix and mumps as a child.
Polio was still not unheard of when I was a child and many of those in the local polio association are my age or thereabouts.

Vaccines are great. But always have risk of side effects. I knew a child who was blind and another brain damaged as a consequence of vaccines side effects and there are still plenty of victims of thalidomide around here too.

@SoloMummy

I certainly had measles, but I rubella, chicken pix and mumps as a child. Polio was still not unheard of when I was a child and many of those in the local polio association are my age or thereabouts.

Vaccines are great. But always have risk of side effects. I knew a child who was blind and another brain damaged as a consequence of vaccines side effects and there are still plenty of victims of thalidomide around here too.

Also lost uncles to whooping cough and meningitis as children /young adults.

I remember all the childhood illnesses and had most, but thankfully not Polio.
Scarlet fever, measles, german measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, etc.

solomummy
I knew several thalidomide victims who were VERY ACTIVE in the polio campaign
because they could see the difference between vaccines and morning sickness drugs

the one vaccine that was a problem is the first version of the whopping cough (pertussis) that caused many cases of brain damage

but
the rest is frankly bullshit
and Andrew Wakefield should be in prison

Vaccination and Antibiotics are wonderful. My DDs had Scarlet Fever. Antibiotics, and just needed a couple of days off school. Not a lengthy convalescence period.

My mum missed her start of school because she was in isolation with scarlet fever, my dd weeks antibiotics right as rain.

I don't remember polio but my grandads had it as a child and he has one leg and foot significantly smaller than the other x

My mum went up to Secondary school a year early because she was considered very bright. Within months, she caught diphtheria and ended up in an isolation hospital for 8 months. Her parents visited her through a window once a week. For some time, there was only her and a young boy in the ward for weeks.
Definitely reminiscent of now.

The upshot was that my mum ended up back in her own cohort at school. As a result, she actually viewed the diphtheria, weirdly, as a benefit overall because she hated being away from her friends.

My grandma had polio and so did my brother in law. Both were life changing illnesses.

I was born in 1960 & have 1 brother just older & 1 just younger. We all had childhood measles, mumps & chicken pox as we each caught them from one another. I remember dropping my older brother off at school in the car his 1st day back after measles. I was still off school. Normally we walked. I had German measles at 18 because I’d been absent the day my peers had the rubella jab at school. I used to babysit and had to check if any of the mothers I’d babysat for that week were in their 1st trimester of pregnancy (thankfully none were). I remember the polio vaccine, I used to think the sugar lump was a reward for the needle jags we had at the same time! I had a smallpox vaccination around 1970, I think because we went on holiday to one of the Balearic Islands. Never knew anyone with polio, but remember the collection boxes. One of the Indian or Pakistani national team cricketers had had it, I remember (cricket mad family!)