Monday, September 19, 2011

Out, out damned spot!

Or rather, spots.

It seems our fair city may be on the cusp of a measles outbreak.

While I don't mean to post "back in the day" entries back to back, this would hardly have been news when I was a kid. Our moms often deliberately exposed us to a sick neighbor, the better to let it run rampant through the family and get it over with.

I know - today, our moms would be arrested for child abuse.

Even the vacines are not 100% effective, particularly if you've only received the first dose, and not the follow up dose when you were school age. Measles as an adult is a miserable experience, as the son of a friend realized a bit too late.

The local warnings have yet to get to the "oh my, stick a needle in everyone just in case!" stage (although they've alerted some 500 people who were thought to maybe have been in the vacinity of the first case reported).

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