What if we stopped vaccinating the people, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asks on their official website. It’s not an entirely far-fetched question. There are, after all a significant number of people who seem to believe vaccines are a waste of time. We decided to explore that possibility in these uncertain times, and we found enough evidence to continue the practice.
Past Tales of U.S. Diseases and Their Vaccines
Blood stream infections, measles, polio, rubella, and whooping cough killed hundreds of thousands of infants, children and adults in the U.S. in past times. However, since we developed vaccines for those diseases (and these are just a few examples) see what happened:
1… Few U.S. doctors now encounter measles that causes pneumonia and encephalitis.
2… Diphtheria that once killed many children is hardly known or reported in the U.S.
3… The U.S. has only reported 15 cases of rubella causing miscarriages since 2012
Yet we keep on vaccinating our children against diseases they may never come across. Why are we doing this? It’s because vaccine-preventable diseases spread from person to person. The more people with vaccinations, the fewer opportunities a disease has to spread.
What Would Happen If We Stopped Vaccinating the People?
Infectious disease rates (excluding COVID) are low in the United States, and we have vaccinations to thank largely for this. However, if we drop our guard an outbreak could follow. Take the case of the whooping cough event in Japan as an example of what might happen, if we stopped vaccinating the people.
In 1974, 80% of Japanese kids were having whooping cough vaccination, and there were only 393 reported cases. However, by 1979 vaccination popularity had fallen progressively to 10%. There were 13,000 infections that year and 41 deaths. The situation reversed after the vaccination rate increased again. May we consider the case for vaccines made.
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