Outside the Beltway

The Power of Vaccines

Steven L. Taylor
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Via the NYT, Measles Deaths Fall to a Record Low Worldwide:

For the first time in history, annual deaths around the globe from measles have fallen below 100,000, the World Health Organization announced this year. As recently as the 1980s, measles killed 2.6 million people a year.

The decline — a public health triumph, as measles has long been a leading killer of malnourished children — was accomplished by widespread donor-supported vaccination that began in the early 2000s.

The estimated number of deaths fell to 89,780 in 2016, but the figure was released by the W.H.O. only in October.

These are truly astounding figures, and ones that put the anti-vaxxer movement into its shameful context.

Because measles is so contagious — one child can infect a dozen others in a classroom or at a playground, even before the telltale rash appears — outbreaks in any community or school can be prevented only by pushing vaccination rates to 95 percent.

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7 responses to “The Power of Vaccines”

  1. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    These are truly astounding figures, and ones that put the anti-vaxxer movement into its shameful context.

    A context that basically boils down to this:

    “If a couple million grubby poor kids have to die to make sure my precious little jewel doesn’t get autism, well, that’s a price we should be willing to pay.”

    Shameful, indeed.

  2. Slugger Avatar
    Slugger

    Congratulations to the doctors and scientists behind this development. You are true benefactors of humanity.

  3. Franklin Avatar
    Franklin

    @Mikey: Well, if it *actually* caused autism, perhaps I could at least basically understand the sentiment. But then, I believe there are things worse than death – and severe autism might be one of them.

  4. Mikey Avatar
    Mikey

    @Franklin:

    But then, I believe there are things worse than death – and severe autism might be one of them.

    Good friends of mine have a son who is “on the spectrum,” and he exhibits pretty much all the symptoms to a significant degree. It’s not easy, for him or his mom and stepdad, but worse than death? Not even remotely.

  5. OzarkHillbilly Avatar
    OzarkHillbilly

    FAKE SCIENCE!!!!!

  6. KM Avatar
    KM

    @Mikey:
    Oh it’s worse then then that – they’d rather risk their own child getting serious lifetime complications up to and including death rather then contemplate personally dealing with autism in any way. It’s not just shameful, it’s selfish.

    The entire movement is utterly ablelist to its core in that it declares it’s better to be blind, crippled, breathing-impaired, severely brain-damaged or dead then possibly autistic…. and keep in mind, they’re referring to the “mild” autism where your child can’t look you in the eye or speak properly and not the massively debilitating, requires institutionalization variety. Anti-vaxxers would rather intentionally damage a child via disease exposure Russian roulette then take a made-up risk of possible damage via statistical Russian roulette (after all, even they acknowledge not all kids are autistic after vaccines so clearly the odds are in your favor). It’s all about them and how they “just can’t deal with that!”

  7. Kari Q Avatar
    Kari Q

    The only reason anti-vaxxers feel this way is because vaccines have been wildly successful in this country. These parents have not seen children die of measles, become disabled by polio, or suffer from a large outbreak of any of the other preventable illness. But they have seen autism. They fear the danger they have seen so deeply that the dangers of those preventable illnesses simply doesn’t exist for them.

    I’m afraid it will take a large scale outbreak of measles (or worse) to remind people that there are consequences to that decision. Right now, too many people think there aren’t.

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