{"id":15948,"date":"2025-01-01T19:41:27","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T19:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=15948"},"modified":"2025-01-01T19:41:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T19:41:33","slug":"the-stunning-success-of-vaccines-in-america-in-one-chart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=15948","title":{"rendered":"The stunning success of vaccines in America, in one chart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Measles, mumps, and polio are supposed to be diseases of the past. In the early to mid-20th century, scientists developed&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/vaccines\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">vaccines<\/a>&nbsp;that effectively eliminated the risk of anyone getting sick or dying from illnesses that had killed millions over millennia of human history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Vaccines, alongside sanitized water and antibiotics, have&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-023-38798-z#:~:text=Vaccines%20have%20revolutionized%20modern%20medicine,their%20impact%20on%20disease%20prevention.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">marked the epoch of modern medicine<\/a>. The US was at&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/system\/files\/working_papers\/w27375\/w27375.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the cutting edge of eliminating these diseases<\/a>, which helped propel life expectancy and economic growth in the postwar era.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;As long-accepted, lifesaving public health measures increasingly become politically polarized, routine vaccination rates are&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/policy-watch\/childhood-vaccination-rates-continue-to-decline-as-trump-heads-for-a-second-term\/?utm_campaign=KFF-Covid&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_3P_iz266TOhPvf-NtGUHduQ39FGNRP47RiDP28gQOeYEbGXlMjpVZMTzhgEu_YcqZbEGDvcQz7M1-R2LmpLWUdPHOMQ&amp;_hsmi=334423251&amp;utm_content=334423251&amp;utm_source=hs_email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">rapidly declining in much of the US<\/a>. In the 2019\u20132020 school year, three states had less than 90 percent of K\u201312 students vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella. By the 2023\u20132024 school year, 14 states had fallen below that threshold. The number of states with more than 95 percent of schoolchildren vaccinated \u2014 the preferred level of coverage to prevent outbreaks \u2014 dropped from 20 to 11 during that same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is no surprise then that the number of US measles cases&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/abc7.com\/post\/global-measles-cases-rise-health-officials-tell-us-what-la-county-is-doing-right-vaccine\/15546618\/#:~:text=The%20World%20Health%20Organization%20reports,compared%20to%20four%20in%202023.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more than quadrupled<\/a>&nbsp;from 2023 to 2024. Nobody has died of measles in the US&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/measles-cases-states-2024-more-than-2023\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">since 2015<\/a>, but if vaccination rates continue to decline, this highly contagious disease (one person can infect&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/28757186\/#:~:text=For%20measles%2C%20R0%20is,in%20a%20totally%20susceptible%20population.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more than a dozen other people<\/a>) will spread with increasing ease, which raises the risk that American kids could die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We know how to prevent that. We\u2019ve had remarkably safe, effective shots for decades. We just need to keep using them.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/386215\/trump-rfk-jr-vaccines-health-measles-chart\">https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/386215\/trump-rfk-jr-vaccines-health-measles-chart<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Measles, mumps, and polio are supposed to be diseases of the past. In the early to mid-20th century, scientists developed vaccines that effectively eliminated the risk of anyone getting sick or dying from illnesses that had killed millions over millennia of human history.<br \/>\nVaccines, alongside sanitized water and antibiotics, have marked the epoch of modern medicine. The US was at the cutting edge of eliminating these diseases, which helped propel life expectancy and economic growth in the postwar era.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As long-accepted, lifesaving public health measures increasingly become politically polarized, routine vaccination rates are rapidly declining in much of the US. In the 2019\u20132020 school year, three states had less than 90 percent of K\u201312 students vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella. By the 2023\u20132024 school year, 14 states had fallen below that threshold. The number of states with more than 95 percent of schoolchildren vaccinated \u2014 the preferred level of coverage to prevent outbreaks \u2014 dropped from 20 to 11 during that same period.<\/p>\n<p>It is no surprise then that the number of US measles cases more than quadrupled from 2023 to 2024. Nobody has died of measles in the US since 2015, but if vaccination rates continue to decline, this highly contagious disease (one person can infect more than a dozen other people) will spread with increasing ease, which raises the risk that American kids could die.<\/p>\n<p>We know how to prevent that. We\u2019ve had remarkably safe, effective shots for decades. We just need to keep using them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.vox.com\/future-perfect\/386215\/trump-rfk-jr-vaccines-health-measles-chart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[73,50,526,925,410],"class_list":["post-15948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-healthcare","tag-medical","tag-vaccination","tag-vaccine","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15950,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15948\/revisions\/15950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}