Roald Dahl's Heartbreaking Take on Vaccines

[tblue37]

16. Like smallpox, measles helped Europeans to decimate and thus conquer the

indigenous population of the New World (though they didn't spread measles intentionally as they did smallpox).

The Aztecs had no immunity to the measles virus (or to mumps or smallpox) because they were entirely new diseases to this part of the world, and huge numbers of idigenous people in the New World died from this disease that most of the conquistadores shook off after a few days of discomfort.

As the most vulnerable victims of a disease die off over time, the disease becomes progressively less virulent, so although measles is no joke, *most* sufferers now just suffer, they don't die of it or end up with serious long-term damage. By the time of the European invasion of the New World, measles was not as devastating an illness for most Europeans, though it still was for some, just as it still is today for some of European ancestry.

Many people (mostly kids) DO still die of measles (the number I saw most recently was that 400 kids each day die of measles around the world!), and some still DO suffer severe, even incapacitating long-term damage from the disease.