Darla Shine doesn't get it. Childhood illnesses of old are no joke. [View all]

[Eugene]

Earlier thread: Wife of White House communications chief goes on anti-vaccine tirade

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Source: Washington Post

Darla Shine doesn’t get it. Childhood illnesses of old are no joke.

By Bethany Mandel February 19 at 5:04 PM
Bethany Mandel is an editor for Ricochet and a stay-at-home mother.

Everyone has nostalgia for parts of our childhoods: spending summer days from sunrise to sunset outside playing with neighborhood kids, grandma’s cooking, television shows and movies. But last week Darla Shine, the wife of the White House communications director, expressed nostalgia for a strange part of her childhood: the diseases we now have vaccines for.

Shine wrote on Twitter that “The entire Baby Boom population alive today had the #Measles as kids.” She added: “I had the #Measles #Mumps #ChickenPox as a child and so did every kid I knew — Sadly my kids had #MMR so they will never have the life long natural immunity I have. Come breathe on me!” Shine is correct that many baby boomers alive today had all of these diseases. Unfortunately, there are boomers who aren’t alive today precisely because they didn’t have access to the lifesaving science of vaccines.

Was life before vaccines really so carefree, and were these diseases really so inconsequential? It’s impossible to travel back in time, but one can step on a plane and, in under a day, be transported to places where vaccines are not nearly so universally available. Nine years ago, I did just this, spending the year in rural Cambodia teaching fifth grade gifted students. It was in Southeast Asia where I became a passionate defender of the importance of vaccines, because I witnessed the ravages of these diseases firsthand.

The first of these vaccine-preventable diseases I encountered was the mumps. At an orphanage I visited, I met several children spread out on rugs in one of the common areas hooked up to IVs filled with coconut water. At first, I had no idea what I was seeing, so thoroughly has mumps been eradicated in the United States: My guide had to explain what was making the orphans so ill.

While I had seen many cases of dengue fever and malaria in my time there, the mumps was frighteningly different. ...

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/darla-shine-doesnt-get-it-childhood-illnesses-of-old-are-no-joke/2019/02/19/d48abca2-3477-11e9-854a-7a14d7fec96a_story.html