Spot the child

Oscar has chicken pox. Childhood diseases are things that we all take for granted as we all survived them. We think of many of these ailments as trivial and for some that may have been the case, but what people forget is that some of these illnesses can have catastrophic effects. When i was a child, illnesses were matter of fact, and if a child got say chicken pox, everyone would bring their kids around to make sure that they all became infected, in the sure knowledge that once you'd had it, you didn't get it again. It was the same with measles, though now we know that measles is a nasty disease that can cause all sorts of problems including, in a worst case scenario, death. So in an enlightened age we have vaccinations against many of these infections.
A few years ago, a renegade doctor, whose work has since been discredited, claimed that there was a causal relationship between the MMR vaccination, and the likelihood of a child becoming autistic. Many parents, understandably as it appeared in the Daily Mail, refused to have their children vaccinated. Of course some of them went on to develop autism, and the rest were simply prone to contracting measles, mumps and rubella.
In order to be effective, vaccination must be given to a significant proportion of the population. This confers what is called herd immunity, and means that should the disease occur, then it will be contained within a local area. Lack of herd immunity allows epidemics to arise, and in some cases pandemics.
There are new strains of some diseases that are being imported through immigration from third world countries and we are all at potential risk from resistant strains of TB and Polio. Antibiotic effectiveness is rapidly being eroded by overprescription and lazy application, and all of the time, bacteria and viruses are mutating and evolving into forms against which we have little or no protection.
Obsession with personal hygeine, though not apparent in everyone, means that infants environments are virtually sterile; their immune systems are not allowed to develop properly, and so they are more easy targets for infection. Our warm draught free homes are incubators for all sorts of unseen agents, and these agents are beginning to win more battles in this war that seems unwinnable.
Oscar may or may not get chicken pox again; that is down to his ability to generate the antibodies that he needs. he has had his MMR vaccination but there are so many other enemies out there. Whether he meets them or not, and how he copes with them are largely down to luck, and perhaps pharmacologists receiving enough grants to produce the ammunition that we need to turn things around once more.