Fact: We don’t make vaccines for trivial diseases.

Antivax Myth: These vaccine-preventable diseases are mild.Why the Myth Exists

We almost never hear about people dying of measles, mumps, chickenpox, and the like.

Variations on this Myth

  • “Doctors can cure these diseases if they occur.”
  • “These diseases are just rites of passage.”
  • “Children actually need these diseases, to have better health later on.”

Examples Found Online

The Real Deal: What the Evidence Shows

Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Are Quite Serious

We don’t make vaccines for trivial diseases.

Vaccine-preventable diseases frequently kill healthy children and adults. Even chickenpox kills healthy children from time to time.

In 1974, approximately the year I suffered and recovered from chickenpox (before there was a vaccine available), 106 people died from the disease in the United States.

Here are the numbers of deaths due to a handful of diseases in the United States, in the single year of 1950, according to the CDC:

Disease Cases Deaths
Diphtheria 5,796 410
Tetanus 486 336
Pertussis (Whooping Cough) 120,718 1,118
Paralytic Polio 33,300 1,904
Measles 319,124 468

These numbers were certainly much higher in prior centuries. For example, diphtheria killed around 15,000 people annually in the U.S.

Prior to vaccines, a family would need to bring several children into the world, to have any hope that perhaps one or two would live past the age of five. Many infants would die from disease before their first birthday. This practice of parenting many “extra” children is still prevalent in countries with minimal to no access to vaccines.

These diseases—and many more—are now preventable with proper vaccine coverage and herd immunity.

Here are the same diseases for the year of 2008 in the United States:

Disease Cases Deaths
Diphtheria 0 0
Tetanus 19 3
Pertussis (Whooping Cough) 13,278 20
Paralytic Polio 0 0
Measles 140 0

Each of these sharp declines in morbidity (cases) and mortality (deaths) is largely due to vaccination.

Mortality is Not the Only Undesirable Outcome

Diseases don’t cause only death. Complications from vaccine-preventable diseases can bring severe misery and disability. This is an outcome often overlooked by anti-vaccine activists.

It would require quite a lengthy report to go into all of the potential complications in any depth. Instead, I wish to give a handful of sobering examples.

Measles can not only destroy a child’s hearing and vision, it may damage his or her immune system for another two to three years. When the measles vaccine is introduced in a community, there is a significant drop in other childhood diseases as well.

Rubella is typically mild in children and adults. However, it can be devastating to the fetus of a mother who catches rubella during her first trimester. Her baby has a 50-90% chance of being born with Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS). In a single outbreak of rubella in the U.S. in 1964-1965, 20,000 children were born with CRS. 2,100 of these newborns with CRS died, 11,000 were born deaf, 3,500 were blind, and 1,800 were intellectually disabled (once labeled mental retardation).

In young children with a Hib infection, up to 30% experience hearing loss or neurologic damage.

Here are a few more of the serious complications from vaccine-preventable diseases:

Disease Complications
Measles pneumonia, bronchitis, deafness, encephalitis, blindness
Mumps meningitis, encephalitis, pancreatitis, hearing loss
Pertussis (whooping cough) pneumonia, seizures, fractured ribs, failure to thrive
Varicella (chickenpox) pneumonia, permanent scarring, brain inflammation, joint infections
Diphtheria airway blockage, pneumonia, heart damage, nerve damage, paralysis
Poliomyelitis (polio) loss of sensation, meningitis, paralysis, permanent disability
Tetanus fractures, suffocation, heart attack
Hepatitis B chronic live inflammation, cirrhosis, live cancer
Hib airway blockage, pneumonia, meningitis, neurologic damage, deafness
Meningococcal Disease organ failure, circulatory collapse, deafness, blindness, neurologic damage, gangrene
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) cervical, vulvar, vaginal, penile, anal, and throat cancers

For those who wish a little greater detail, I’ve created these infographics:

vaccine-preventable disease infographics

Vaccine-Preventable Disease Infographics on Dawnsbrain.com

Suffering is another undesirable fact of vaccine-preventable disease. Why would you wish your child to needlessly suffer, and miss important schooling, when vaccines are available?

Vaccines Are Why Disease Rates Are So Low

Why do some people think these diseases are mild? It is likely due to disease incidence currently being low in countries with high vaccination rates. It is easy to dismiss illnesses you almost never hear of anymore.

Modern medical care is why death rates are low for vaccine-preventable diseases that do crop up. We have the technology and pharmaceuticals to markedly reduce death rates for many of these diseases.

However, doctors cannot “cure” viral infections. They can ease some symptoms, and they can provide emergency care when complications arise.

In many cases, modern medicine is helpless against a vaccine-preventable disease that is out of control and destroying a human body.

Death doesn’t always happen immediately. Sometimes, a child will apparently “recover” from measles, only to be struck down by a complication from it years later. Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis (SSPE) can be caused by the measles virus hiding out in neural tissue. The virus then may cause irreversible brain inflammation and death as many as ten years after the initial illness. There is no cure for SSPE.

Low Disease Rates Is One Reason People Think Vaccines Are Unnecessary

Vaccines are a victim of their own success. As time goes by, there are greater numbers of people who don’t remember the devastation caused by these diseases. Adults who grew up without fear of disease are raising children, and unfortunately are sometimes deciding against vaccination.

When vaccination rates decrease, disease rates climb. The next outbreak is only a plane ride away. Often, an outbreak is cause by unvaccinated children or adults visiting a country with low vaccination rates, and then bringing a disease home with them.

Some vaccine-preventable diseases that had gone away are returning and wreaking havoc. And they are killing and disabling people. Pertussis had reached a low of 1,010 cases and 7 deaths in 1976, just as anti-vaccine activists began vilifying the pertussis vaccine. Pertussis incidence has since climbed back up into the tens of thousands of cases annually in the U.S.

Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Are Not Good for You

There is no evidence that any of these diseases provide protection against cancer, etc. A handful of studies draw these conclusions. These studies suffer from design and methodology flaws that fall apart under basic scrutiny.

References and Further Reading

News Sampling: the Worldwide Impact of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases

Science-Based Memes and Screenshots