I confess to bewilderment at the outbreak of seeming fashionable hysteria over measles vaccinations. Why has it suddenly become a major issue now but never hitherto?
Given there’s a vaccine for it, as for any potential illness, then obviously it’s desirable to have it but the current carry-on makes it sound like a newly arisen life and death issue. Furthermore, it seems unique to New Zealand, perhaps a reflection of our small isolated society in which nothing much happens. Certainly there’s no such news domination in Britain or Australia on this topic.
When I was a child every kid had the measles, along with chicken pox and the mumps. Back then it went with the territory.
A terse letter from a John Buchan in the New Zealand Herald summed it up perfectly. It read “Pretty much anyone over 60 has natural immunisation from (having) measles as children”.
Well said Mr Buchan.
I’ll watch for the next hysteria outbreak. My pick; flu injections.
