and is the R in the MMR shot. It's generally milder than regular measles. Most of us who grew up before the MMR shot got all of those diseases.
I have a hypothesis about why in recent years measles seems to be much more virulent. Back in the day when we all got those diseases, there was a certain amount of resistance passed along from mother to child. Not a full immunity by any means, but something that enabled our immune systems to deal better with the diseases. I'm not downplaying that they could still be fairly serious, and others in this thread have reported deaths or life long complications, but still.
Remember how devastating all the the White Men's diseases were to the native populations of this continent. They had never been exposed to any of them, and when they came up against what for the most part were relatively benign (for the white Europeans) childhood diseases, they, with absolutely zero resistance, got a lot sicker and a lot more of them died.
Now we have two generations in this country who for the most part haven't had these diseases because of the vaccinations. So that minor resistance that formerly was passed down from mother to child has disappeared, and so getting these diseases is much worse than it used to be.
I am NOT advocating not getting vaccinations and getting the diseases themselves. I am simply pointing out a possible explanation for why measles seems to be much worse these days.
Here's an interesting point about smallpox. It is likewise highly contagious with a relatively high mortality rate, and survivors were often scarred for life. Then, in the late 19th century, a vastly more benign version emerged, known as variola minor compared to variola major, the deadly version, which killed 30%, sometimes more of its victims. Variola minor, on the other hand, had a death rate of less than 1% and almost never caused scarring. It was in the process of displacing the more virulent variola major, and the reason that didn't happen, with smallpox becoming a relatively benign childhood disease like measles, mumps, and chicken pox, was that right around the time that happened, proper smallpox vaccinations became common, leading eventually to the eradication of smallpox from the disease pool.
Pox, An American History by Michael Willrich details this entire part of the history of smallpox. Another fascinating book on smallpox is Pox Americana by Elizabeth A. Fenn, which details the smallpox epidemic in this country which exactly coincided with the Revolution. By 1776 Americans (meaning white Europeans) had been living on this continent for several generations, and smallpox had stopped being common, mainly because there weren't enough people to keep a reservoir of the disease alive. So when the British sent soldiers to quell the rebellion, some of them would arrive with smallpox, which would then sweep through the colonies like wildfire, killing far more Americans than British, because of a loss of a certain kind of immunity as I've suggested above. In any case, both books are utterly fascinating.
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