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.

I had measles, rubella, mumps and chicken pox (pre-vaccination times). There was never any hint that we could suffer long term damage from them but no decent parent would have let that worry show in front of their children anyway. I remember my sister being very ill with chicken pox, although she recovered well. I seemed to breeze through them all (mumps stands out as a total bastard, however)!
I believe I have some hearing loss from rubella, though, as it did deteriorate on one side from then.
My parents knew people who had been left with disabilities from polio and we did have all the vaccinations as they became available. Diphtheria and Scarlet Fever were also killers with no cure in their living memory.

We’re not used to a disease we can’t stop, I don’t think.

The thing is, people like to turn any mention of a vaccine on here into pro vs anti vaxx, and anyone with reservations is shouted down.

I’m currently sporting a huge red lump on one arm from a vaccination last week. I’m not anti vaxx! I had that vaccination to protect me and my baby, when it’s born (20 weeks pregnant.)

But I wouldn’t go out and have a load of vaccinations that are of no benefit to me because they do carry a risk of an adverse reaction. I would be even more cautious where children are concerned.

I never had polio but remember the lido being closed because of an outbreak and an obviously very sick little girl in the doctors waiting room.

I have had mumps, that was awful. Measles, I dont remember. Whooping cough, my vivid memory of that is being in an oxygen tent and given ice cream.

My Mum got German measles while pregnant with my baby brother, he was born with half a brain and lived less than an hour.

No memory of ever having it but I reacted to the needle test so didn't have the tb vaccination.

Have the scars from chicken pox, so obviously had that, but no memory of it. But a couple of friends have caught chickenpox as adults and both have were seriously ill, one managed to stay out of hospital the other ended up in intensive care and it really was touch and go for a few weeks and he still hasn't fully recovered years later.

Perhaps its because I know there have always been these serious illnesses around that I'm less scared of covid than those 10 years younger who haven't really lived with potentially serious illnesses.

And many so called childhood illnesses have the potential to be life threatening. And chicken pox in particular is far more serious in adults than children (in that way it is similar to covid, although i know its not the same)

The German measles / rubella vaccination is a case in point, actually.

Girls used to have it in their teens (year 9 I think, so 13/14) as it is generally a mild disease - so mild that most people don’t even know they have had it. By having it in their teens it would mean they were immune for their childbearing years.

Having it aged 1 is no use to the baby but protects pregnant women. But to me it is more sensible to protect pregnant women directly.

I had measles as a child - it was horrible, and I still have some scars. I also remember kids with Polio, whose parents hadn't had them vaccinated. That was worse.

I had Whooping Cough just a few years ago. My mum forgot to have me vaccinated. I was out of action for nearly 3 months.

We take vaccinations for granted.

@Dilbertian

I caught mumps 3 years ago - I’m 48 now, so grew up before the MMI jab and thanks to patchy vaccinations (I was in London at the time) it was starting to become more common. By God I was ill! And it also triggered auto-immune issues from which I am really only now starting to recover. Those ‘childhood diseases’ really are a b*gger when you catch them as an adult!

There's an excellent chapter on polio in Matt Morgan's superb book "Critical". I was born in the 70s and had a nasty case of measles. I also almost died of meningococcal septicaemia. My parents had me vaxxed against nothing, but older brother everything. I honestly believe they'd have been happier if meningitis had killed me.

My brother had mumps in his early 20s and is now deaf in 1 ear. He hadn't been given MMR. He has had catch up injections now as he wouldn't be protected against measles either

I don't remember polio, but I know I had measles, mumps, and chicken pox, as did my siblings. We were born in the mid 60s.

We all got the smallpox vaccination and also the BCG for TB. I suspect TB was a bigger concern in Ireland than polio, though I could be wrong. Ireland had quite a TB problem until the 60s.

I had measles as a small child in the mid-60s, but only a very mild case. I knew about polio, but mainly because there were collection boxes to raise money for people affected everywhere. I must've been amongst the last to be vaccinated against smallpox. My childhood vaccination record says I had it in 1966, so I'd have been two. The scar from it is quite obvious, but not as much so as the BCG. I had chicken pox aged 9, the smell of calamine lotion takes me right back then. I managed to avoid mumps.

Reminds me, dh and I caught whooping cough a few years ago, some 40+ years after being vaccinated against it (I guess the vaccine wears off eventually). Bloody awful disease, coughed til I vomited, coughed til I wet myself, woke up in the night coughing and gasping for breath, coughed for months.

Thank God for vaccines!

My mum has polio in about 1947 when she was 12. She was in Alder Hey for 18 months. She has scars on her back from it. She was very traumatised by the time in hospital as her parents could only visit for a few hours once a month.

Thank goodness for vaccines. All my 4 are vaccinated and have taken part in vaccine trials etc.

I'll be first in the line for a Covid vaccine.

My mum had polio as a young woman. She was treated in an iron lung. Against all the odds she recovered but she battled against the after effects all her life. She was a very determined woman and walked without a stick, gardened a large cottage garden and never let the physical effects hold her back. She had a very curved spine and had to have a hip replacement when she was older. She was an amazing woman - my role model.

Forgot to say: She was absolutely convinced she caught it from the swimming pool and as children we were never allowed to go swimming- except in the sea.

Polio is a funny one, because it only became a really serious disease with major outbreaks in the twentieth century. When hygiene was worse, most people got it mildly as babies and were unharmed. By the 1950s, the people getting it were older children and adults, because no one had childhood immunity, and it was essentially a new problem that (for a while) no one knew how to deal with. An interesting comparison to coronavirus, in some ways.

Yes, it is Mary Berry who had it. She has one hand that doesn't work at all well, you can see if you look closely that she barely uses it.

My sister and I both had measles, my sister had whooping cough too. I can still remember the dreadful noise she made.

We had an Uncle who had survived Polio and had a withered arm as a result.

Measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox were all still pretty common in the 80s.

I was born in 1967.
I wasn't allowed smallpox vaccine due to exzema, but my brothers both had it, I remember so early 70's
My grandfather had polio and then typhoid and died, in 1946. Left my dad fatherless and my Granny a widow.

I remember one of the Blue Peter presenters getting measles and waving from her sick bed on camera.

I had rubella as a child, was then vaccinated at 13 in school.

One of my Mum's friends had a very severely disabled daughter due to catching rubella when pregnant

I agree that we have a generation who don't have a clue about infectious diseases really

Thanks OP. It’s good to get that historical context to put things into perspective. It makes me appreciate how benign my world has been so far. I hope my DC gets some more years of that.

I remember me and my sister both catching what turned out to be chickenpox in the mid 60s and my parents freaking out that it might be measles. They kept us in bed in a dark room as they were terrified our eyes would be damaged.

My father was severely disabled after catching TB in his hip in 1923 after falling off a wall onto sharp stones. He was sent away to a TB hospital for 2 years at the age of 9, never seeing his parents for all that time.

My great aunt had TB as a teen, in her bones, which is different to the infection you gte in your lungs apparentely.

She had a choice of havign her foot amputated or spending 5 years in a TB hospital with no gurantee of cure.

She chose amputation.
She died last year, so very much within living memory.

I wasn't old enough to remember Polio or Rubella I was vaccinated for both. I also was given another Rubella vaccine when I was about 20 before having kids.

Really interesting thread op - totally agree that a lot of adults are so used to everything being curable with a trip to the gps that coronavirus has freaked them out.

I was watching Rainbow with my son the other day and Zippy got measles! I remember lots of kids having it in the 80s.

I have poor hearing and eyesight as a result of measles. I have also had whooping cough, chicken pox and German measles, but I particularly remember being so ill with measles, and having to have the bedroom curtains closed.

I was born in 1958 and predate the MMR by many years. I remember seeing kids in callipers due to polio. Fortunately, the polio vaccine had been developed by the time I was born, and my mum made sure that my sister and I had the vaccine.

Back in the day parents had the same fear of polio that today's parents have of meningitis.

I was born in 67, however my mother was an anti vaxxer so had no immunisations (I got a tetanus at 10 after an an accident at school, and I had the polio immunisation at 27 at the same time as my newborn son!).
We had a distant relative who was affected by polio and had spent a good chunk of his earlier years at what was called a 'sanitarium' where victims were sent to 'recover'. Another relative was deaf due to childhood measles.
I had had whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella (and chickenpox but that doesn't count for the purposes of this thread as we don't vaccinate even now) by the time I was 7. I was hospitalised and isolated for a week with measles as my illness was so severe the doctors could not believe it was 'just' measles.
My older sisters (not vaccinated) tell me I was whooping for months and months as a toddler. Fun times, I'm sure.
Needless to say, and despite each time leaving me a little tearful, my kids are first in the queue for any vaccination going.

Yes I had measles as a five year old, pretty much everyone in my year at school had it at that time, it was 'the norm'. Was ill for nearly 3 weeks, I remember the itchy rash and being in a darkened room.

I had chicken pox aged 10, a mild dose, but I have a scar on my chin as a keepsake. Again, it went round our class at school. There was talk of having 'chickenpox parties'.

I was given smallpox vaccine as an infant when being breast-fed but it didn't 'take' due to Mum's antibodies. I had to have it as we were traveling to Australia.

Polio - we had the Sabin and Salk jabs at that time, I had my last jab aged 12. There was one girl in my class who'd had the disease and had her legs in calipers.

My mother had whooping cough as a toddler but by the time I came along there was a vaccine.