Problem with that philosophy is that "the damn thing" can be deadly.

As a range of focus - I predate the MMR vaccine and when I caught measles, it was still the era when that could kill a kid. In fact, there was a window where things were dicey for this author because the fever wasn't breaking and the spots weren't emerging. Fun times.

Almost unrelated, but still with "simple childhood diseases": I caught measles, rubella, and chicken pox, one after the other. I was away from school so long that my contemporaries thought I had died. And that was just like... a fact of life for everyone.

I'm heavy pro-vax and cannot understand how some people think that Autism is literally a fate worse than death.