For people of my age, these were normal childhood diseases that weren't very important.

I'm 70, to put this in context.

People like me were lucky. I honestly don't recall knowing anyone who had a bad outcome from any of those.

But people like me got the DPT shots, and never had diphtheria, and most of us never got whooping cough.

My sons, born in 1982 and 1987 got the MMR vaccine, although they both got chicken pox.

Here's an interesting bit of historical context. Back in the late 19th century, smallpox, an incredibly devastating disease, evolved a less deadly version. Those who got that version, called variola minor to distinguish it from variola major, the more deadly version, not only were vastly less likely to die, but they didn't scar. Had smallpox vaccinations already been making great inroads, this version would have become essentially a childhood disease, rather like measles, mumps, and rubella, and again in the absence of vaccinations, would have been seen as not very important or deadly.

But the reality is, these relatively benign diseases can still cause terrible things, and so the development of immunizations against them has been a wonderful thing.

In an aside, my older son actually got Fifth disease, which is the fifth and otherwise unnamed childhood disease characterized mainly by a rash. It seems to be quite benign.

unless you were one of the people killed or permanently disabled because of it. The CDC says that for every 1000 people who get measles, one or two will die.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html

You are lucky indeed that you've never known anyone who had a bad outcome from any of these diseases. I have known several people who did.

I don't want to be saying, "Oh, those childhood diseases weren't important at all," because they were. Just because I didn't know anyone adversely affected is irrelevant.
I once asked my mother, who was born in 1916, if she'd ever seen smallpox, and she said, not really, but she recalls that when she was a child a family near hers was quarantined from smallpox. Which again, isn't to diminish the horror of smallpox, but simply to point out how someone might not have come in contact with it, even when it was still around.

It was very effective and smallpox was uncommon in the US by 1916. Funny story, kind of: A while back I was reading some 1895 and 1896 Providence newspapers, following a local story that was in the news then. I found an anti-vax essay that could have been written today, if you switched out a few words, expressing vehement opposition to the mandatory vaccination of public school students. I wish I remembered which issue it was in, so I could link to it.

still occurred regularly, because it wasn't universal.

In fact, the last outbreak in this country was in 1948.

A while back I read a book about smallpox, the development and spread of the vaccine, and how it was evolving to be a far less deadly and scarring disease during the 19th and 20th centuries. It also pointed out times when the vaccine was poorly prepared and was itself deadly.

Can't recall the exact name of the book.

Most young people in the United States today will probably never meet anyone born after 1970 or so who's had measles.

V. minor was surely less deadly than V. major, but still was significantly more likely to kill someone than measles. Anyway, isolated outbreaks here and there notwithstanding, the main reason your mother didn't know anyone who'd had smallpox of either species was because vaccination worked.

which is horrifically painful and may be linked to Alzheimer's.

Vaccinations work, but only if enough people have them.

One devastated my eyesight.

I FORCED my kids to get vaccinated!

With two close family members who need others to vaccinate to keep safe (one had a severe allergic reaction to his first vaccine, the other is currently immmunocompromised) I have absolutely no patience with anti-vaxxers.

I had chickenpox when I was a child, as did many of my peers, and I have seen older colleagues get shingles so painful they suffered for weeks and months. One even got chickenpox again, and couldn't see her first, newborn grandchild for a month.

Mumps? Men without immunization against mumps, like my relative, could become sterile if they get it. Measles? Too many got encephalitis, went deaf or blind, died because of measles. The last measles death in Norway happened in the 1970s, and now outbreaks are happening again, and we're just waiting for the next one.



The Russians certain have the number of too many Americans and are playing them like fiddles. Horrible for all the world, but most for rational Americans, who have to live with these people.