I think I’m younger than you, and I’m old enough that i waited in line to get the measles vaccine when it came out, i think. And i survived mumps. There are still a lot of people older than me who are alive, most of whom caught measles as a kid.
I know i waited in line to get the German measles vaccine, because my mother reminisced about how at the time, they only vaccinated girls, and she was in a huge line of mothers and their daughters.
The covid vaccine lines reminded me childhood vaccinations, except the age mix was very different.
Good point. I suppose widespread vaccination of kids came out in the USA in the early 1960s. I remember lining up for that and various other ones. Like you I also caught at least some of the childhood diseases unvaccinated: which of measles, mumps, or chickenpox I can’t recall, but it was at least one. Fortunately the polio vax came out in time I didn’t run that particular risk.
So I suppose we could say that folks born much before WAG 1950-1955 are from the pre-vaccination era at least in the USA. And would have caught it, or not, as a kid. And would have survived it or not.
There are still a lot of Americans alive who’re from that era and hence 70-something now. Fewer all the time of course, and the older among them are less active in the world.
I contracted measles, mumps, German measles (rubella) and chickenpox before corresponding vaccines were available.
The few…the proud…the infected. 
The vaccine was available in the 50s. Unfortunately, my parents skipped that one.
I caught measles in my early 30s. It was the sickest I ever got. Was home for 2 weeks, quarantined, with a cloth wrapped around my eyes because light hurt so much. Killer headache, joint aches, the rash, of course. I can’t remember what all other symptoms I had, but my doctor called every day to see how I was doing, and I remember thinking I finally understood how it felt to want to die.
Caught a secondary respiratory infection that kept me home for another couple of weeks. I learned first hand about losing immunity for awhile.
I recovered, obviously.
Even though German measles is quite rare and isn’t really deadly, I pursued getting an MMR vaccine just last year. I had mumps as a kid, so wasn’t worried about that. But the idea that I could get German measles and infect a pregnant person bothered me. So I jumped through the hoops required by the current regime and finally got the MMR.
I encourage everyone to vaccinate their kids and themselves if they haven’t already done so. Measles is scary.
One of the first things that Mrs Magill did when she recovered from leukemia was get her MMR vaccine. She really did not like the idea of being immunocompromised. Pretty much every annual physical since then has involved getting another couple vaccines.
My husband is likely to need to be revaccinated when his myeloma treatment tapers off. The same drugs that are effectively killing his cancer cells are also killing a lot of the cells that store immunity.
I asked my doctor about possibly skipping the covid vaccine last fall, because it made me so sick. He replied that with my husband newly diagnosed with cancer, i needed to get all the vaccines.
(I’ve been tested as an adult for immunity to measles and German measles. I remember having mumps. Otherwise, I would have sought out the MMR vaccine, too.)
The first measles vaccine became available in 1963, when I was 10. I had contracted the disease when I was 6 or 7. Same with both mumps and chicken pox.
Wasn’t fun, and I’m glad my kids didn’t have to go through those few weeks of discomfort.
I wonder why I thought it was available earlier? I think it was because when I first went to get the MMR last year, I was told I had to get a blood test to determine if I’d ever had measles before (I knew I had, but I was getting the MMR for the German measles) and they told me the birth year cut-off was 1957. So that must be why I thought the MMR was introduced earlier.
The blood test showed exactly what I expected: Immunity to measles and mumps, but not to German measles, so they finally approved the MMR vax.
Thanks for fighting my ignorance.
The MMR was introduced later. Per Wikipedia:
The MMR vaccine was developed by Maurice Hilleman.[6] It was licensed for use in the US by Merck in 1971
It’s the measles vaccine that was introduced in 1963. And the cutoff is “born in 1957” because those kids went to elementary school before vaccines were available, and measles is highly contagious, so the presumption is that anyone who attended school before the vaccine caught it. And the guideline is based on measles both because it’s the nastiest of the three, and we have a current outbreak, I’d guess.
The first German measles vaccine was introduced later, in 1969. Also from Wikipedia:
In June 1969, the NIH issued the first license for commercial production of the rubella vaccine to the pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme.[11] This vaccine made use of the HPV77 rubella strain and was produced in duck embryo cells. This version of the rubella vaccine was in use for only a few years before the introduction of the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1971.[12]
These are both US dates, but i suspect the dates are similar around the world. Vaccines are cheap compared to their alternative.
At my school, in my third world country (Zimbabwe) we all got vaccinated for everything, courtesy of our third world government. Hell, some girls in my junior school played with a stray cat who later died and turned out to be rabid, they got vaccinated. Free.
All on the government - absolutely free, even in Robert Mugabe’s wannabe dictatorship.
The USA is weird.
Yes, but that was stupid. For the time and expense it took for me to get the blood test, they could have simply administered the vax.
This regime is making it harder for people to get vaccinated – which I think is the point. There’s no real purpose to this extra testing. Had I elected to make the MMR the first vax I got caught up on, I could have gotten it without the rigamarole. But since it was the last vax I received, I had to jump through the stupid made-up hoops.
They started vaccinating boys shortly thereafter. The original idea was that it’s not a very serious disease unless you are a developing fetus, so they wanted to vaccinate girls and young women to protect fetuses. Then they decided it was worth it to reduce the community spread, and vaccinate everyone.
The HPV vaccine was originally only approved for girls, to prevent cervical cancer. It was later expanded to boys both to reduce the spread of the virus and to protect boys from penile and throat cancer. It’s been highly effective.
Yup. My brother decided to get it before all that nonsense went into effect, because it was cheaper to get the jab than to get tested. He must have done that before you did.
i got tested for measles and German measles for reasons that really aren't relevant to most people who might care.
I got tested for german measles because, when I got married, my state required me to be tested for immunity, get vaccinated, or listen to a doctor lecture me on the importance of vaccination. 
I worked in a hospital at the time, and it was very easy to get tested, and that felt like the option that would be most reassuring. (assuming my childhood vaccine took.). I got tested for measles during the prior outbreak. among ultra-Orthodox Jews in NYC, because my cohort got less effective vaccines than the MMR, and were supposed to be re-vaccinated, and my mother had gotten me a medical exemption from the re-vaccination because we’d had a bad reaction to the first vaccine. (We probably caught a mild case of measles - before the version of the vaccine that’s in the MMR was introduced, there were a variety of attenuated-virus-vaccines on the market, one of which was pulled because too many kids got sick from it. I probably had that one, although there aren’t records.)
Anyway, I was immune to measles 10 years ago, and to German measles 20 years ago, so I figure I’m still fine.
That seems common all over Africa, possibly because people see the consequences of not vaccinating. In the US a lot of parents have access to good hospitals, and they think that if their kids get sick they will get patched up. Usually true, but not always.
I had measles and German measles long before the shot was available. I never had mumps, so when my first child was born in 1981 I got an MMR shot from her pediatrician, just to be safe.
That used to be the case in my third world country (Argentina) too, I remember getting vaccinated at school.
But nowadays our government wants to be like the U.S. in all the bad things so our once enviable vaccination stats have backslided awfully.
I mean, vaccines are highly cost-effective, and the worse your health system, the more valuable they are. That’s why the US govt has quietly reinstated the requirement for the flu vaccine for recruits. Because actually, the US military doesn’t want to deal with flu outbreaks…
They don’t waste money testing recruits, either. They just jab them.
I believe UNICEF might have played a part in the “free” part.
I personally collected for UNICEF as a child.
You’re welcome 
.
I had German measles in third grade, and then mumps one week after I returned to school. Both were absolutely miserable.
Is there any legit reason to not get one of the e.g. MMR components if you’re already immune?
IOW is there some risk or side effect which is better avoided if you got an unnecessary measles vax?
Or is this simply ignorant BS from the current criminal regime erecting obstacles to public health wherever they can?