Listen to the old timers ...

According the Johns Hopkins Measles Tracker the US has seen 1513 measles cases this year as of March 13. (Yes, I looked on a university site; dare I trust whatever stats the federal government is offering any longer? Don't know.)

I am old enough to have vivid memories of a time when measles and chickenpox were simply considered hazards of childhood. In the 1950s, most of us got the diseases; most of us came through fine. But not everyone. 

There was a little kid who lived down the street. She was several years younger, had a sister my age who was someone I played with. The family was not exactly close to mine, but a pack of us kids rioted around in each other's houses. I can still remember that family's entrance hall and front room. And then, the younger sister got sick and we were kept out of that house. Several weeks went by and we were told that the little one had died. Her illness had begun with measles; she suffered complications which I now think probably included encephalitis. And then she was gone.

The kid pack never went back to that house and I don't remember the older sister ever playing with us again.

Naturally I have no trouble believing that vaccines which prevent measles, mumps and rubella (chickenpox) and later polio (that scourge too crippled several girls in my school) are among 20th century America's best inventions.

So I was heartened to read Jonathan Cohn's shout-out to a creative intervention. 

Grandparents for Vaccines recruits elders who lived the pre-vaccine era to tell their stories.

The goal of Grandparents for Vaccines is to push back against [the anti-vaccine] movement, while getting Americans thinking about what’s at stake if the trends continue. And while that’s an awful lot to ask from a group of seniors, most of them political novices still learning the finer points of social media, they have two powerful weapons for making their case: the unique moral authority of grandparents, and insights that can come only from people who have seen these scourges up close. ...

[Founder Arthur] Lavin likens the effort to what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did in the 1980s and ’90s. ...

Judging by the offerings on YouTube, the project needs more new immigrants and people of color. But if we have to do public health for ourselves without federal authorities we can trust, who better to testify than grandparents?