Does it mean anything if I had rubella (german measles) when I was a kid?
Rubella is a live attentuated vaccine, so it’s possible it could give you a rubella-like illness. Rubella in children and adults with normal immune systems is generally mild (often symptomless) and self limiting. The reason for vaccinating is to protect pregnant women, or more accurately their fetuses. Fetuses that get rubella are often born blind or deaf or both. They often have mental retardation and heart defects as well. It is a major cause of lifelong disability in unvaccinated populations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_… Boys get routinely vaccinated as well as girls to stop the virus getting a foothold in the population as a whole. This protects the odd unvaccinated pregnant woman, or people in whom the vaccine didn’t work. The principle is called (perhaps tactlessly) “herd immunity”.
