*sigh*Argh! Angry, Confused, Scared.

[dfrecore]

My kid has some friends who have it, I'm super tempted to have him go hang out with them and actively try to get it, so that he'll get it, get over it, and be good for a long while.  He's 16.  I have zero worries about it for him, or my daughter (18).

If they were little kids, I'd worry even less.

I don't know if it's an acquired memory, or real, but I used to think that we had get togethers to get sick when I was young.

Now? I don't really think it happened. Would parents WANT their kids to get ill? Doesn't make sense to me. Who wants to parent a sick kid? I probably "acquired" the memory from hearing folks say it happened. Urban legend.

Knowing how much my mother suffered from shingles, I would no more have my kids (if I had them) play around folks who have COVID19 than I'd tell them to go play on the highway. Did my mom's generation know that shingles came from chicken pox? I doubt it. Although she got the vaccine, she still got it and had residual pain for the rest of her life . (After almost losing her eye sight in one  it to shingles.) Who knows what the long-term ramifications of this virus will be?

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People absolutely 100% used to have their kids get chicken pox on purpose - it was highly contagious, there was no vaccine, and because it was much easier to deal with in very young kids than older ones or adults.  The earlier you had them, the better off you were.  My cousin is scarred from having the chicken pox as a teen, and he missed a lot of school (he wasn't born yet when the rest of us got it).

I'm not sure if they did it for other diseases like measles, but they for sure did it with Chicken Pox.