alt Hacker NewsQuite interesting to see that measles is coming back. I suppose there is a notion of generational memory. Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive unless it’s catastrophic and a measles epidemic is eminently survivable as a civilization if incredibly tragic for the families affected.
I had measles as a child, too. Fortunately, my parents are doctors and I was well cared for and nature was good to me as well. So here I am, pretty much fine. I’d rather have not had the disease, all things told. Incredibly contagious disease. I was in the room with the other sick child for only a few moments.
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> “Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive”
We are forgetting the lessons of WWII, and the world is now stocked with thousands of nuclear weapons each hundreds of times more powerful than Hiroshima.
I don’t think we as a civilization can afford this kind of amnesiac adaptation anymore.
> Quite interesting to see.
No, the article is a shitshow.
Ben Dowse is an MD, not a pediatric nurse.
The family ended up accepting the antibody treatment before leaving the hospital. The Daily Mail article bizarrely implies that they never accepted the treatment.
Both journalistic mistakes are clear from reading the beginning of the Wired article linked in the error-laden Daily Mail article.
Did you notice these errors?
It is not "generational memory", it is an active campaign of lies and FUD by crooks, grifters and idiots.
It seems like there’s a pretty strong parallel with the failure of the screw worm eradication programme. It just became a thing we did, rather than the absolute miracle it was - like vaccination - and then from complacency grows suspicion, for again, as you say, few people alive remember how it was.
It erases immune memory, taking away antibodies to recently exposed diseases. It's best not to get it.