Hi, Atlanta!

With another local measles case reported this week, I was thinking about people who experienced the illness before a vaccine was available. In a presentation to the Atlanta Business Roundtable last week, I asked how many people had measles as a child. Hands shot up around the room.

Measles was common before widespread vaccination in the United States started in the late 1960s. Before then, many people had measles as young children.

“Most every pediatrician saw it … 1 in 5 children who got it ended up in the hospital. So it was a serious disease,” Dr. Jane Seward told me recently. She retired in 2016 after about a decade at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she served as deputy director of the Division of Viral Diseases.

Complications could include pneumonia and death. Nowadays, most physicians have never seen a case because of widespread vaccination. That could change, as more than 1,000 measles cases have been reported in the United States already this year.

Dr. Bill Foege, who helped orchestrate the global eradication of smallpox, told me he thinks one reason for declining vaccination rates in the United States is that people don’t know the damage measles and other childhood diseases once caused.

“Parents are not trying to hurt their children when they keep them from being vaccinated. … Now they don't have the disease — and the risk of the disease — to compare to the risk of the vaccine,” Foege said.

“When I was young, you had no trouble convincing people to take [the] polio vaccine, because they saw what happened was the crippling of polio,” he said.

Did you or someone you know experience measles or polio as a child? I’d like to hear about it. Respond to this email to tell me your story.