Measles is back: A mother's story, from today's LA Times:

[passiveporcupine]

41. My dad had polio as a kid

He was born in the mid 20's. If they had vaccines back then, should they not have given them, because some might survive? He survived, but was crippled in one leg.

I was born in '49. I also survived measles as a kid. But maybe I wouldn't have had to go through that if I'd been vaccinated.

My grandmother and her sister both had rheumatic fever as kids. In those days they did not have antibiotics to treat the cause of the rheumatic fever. They both ended up with congestive heart failure from it. They survived, but had lots of health problems when they got older because of it. My great aunt even had a leg amputated when she was in her 50's because of circulation problems. She died in her mid 60's. Gran died in her 70's, after years of barely living because of her heart condition. If there had been a vaccine for this (there is still no vaccine) I can assure you, I wish they'd both had gotten it. I wish my dad had the option of a vaccine to prevent the polio.

By the late 1950s, even before the introduction of measles vaccine, measles-related deaths and case fatality rates in the United States had decreased markedly, presumably as a result of improvement in health care and nutrition. From 1956 to 1960, an average of 450 measles-related deaths were reported each year (∼1 death/ 1000 reported cases), compared with an average of 5300 measles-related deaths during 1912–1916 (26 deaths/ 1000 reported cases) [2]. Nevertheless, in the late 1950s, serious complications due to measles remained frequent and costly. As a result of measles virus infections, an average of 150,000 patients had respiratory complications and 4000 patients had encephalitis each year; the latter was associated with a high risk of neurological sequelae and death. These complications and others resulted in an estimated 48,000 persons with measles being hospitalized every year

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.long

Are you an anti-vaxxer? Seriously?