Anti-vaccine folks seem to think that they found another big bombshell report!
They are talking about an article from 2001, The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The 20th Century United States, by David Cutler, which found that “clean water was responsible for nearly half of the total mortality reduction in major cities, three-quarters of the infant mortality reduction, and nearly two-thirds of the child mortality reduction.”
The article even included mortality graphs for anti-vaccine folks to misuse!
Did the Measles Vaccine Have Only a Meager Effect on Deaths?
What are they missing?
“In the early 20th Century, mortality in the United States declined dramatically. Mortality rates fell by 40% from 1900 to 1940, an average decline of about 1% per year”
Cutler on The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The 20th Century United States
Most of the decline the article talks about came at the beginning of the 20th Century, before these vaccines were developed.
What about the vaccines for whooping cough, diphtheria, and tetanus, which were developed in the earlier part of the 20th Century? They weren’t routinely used until much later. Remember, the individual diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccines didn’t even become combined into a single DTP vaccine until 1948.
But, all of these diseases that are now vaccine preventable were still very deadly in the 1940s and 1950s, even with clean water and sanitation.
Sure, mortality rates had declined already by this time, just like they had for most other things, but the effects of clean water eventually plateaued and a lot of people were still getting measles and a lot of people were still dying.
At least they were until the measles vaccine was discovered and more and more people started getting vaccinated and protected.
You can even ask the author of the article in question…
“Dear Lord. The fact that vaccines aren’t the only reason why mortality declines in no way means that vaccines are not an important reason why mortality declines.”
David M Cutler, Harvard College Professor, Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics
The idea that the measles vaccine had only a relatively meager effect on deaths due to measles infections is silly. It’s also dangerous if you believe it and leave your kids unvaccinated and at risk to get measles, which is clearly a deadly disease.
More on Anti-Vaccine Mortality Graphs
- VAXOPEDIA – Who Dies with Measles?
- VAXOPEDIA – How Many People Get Measles Each Year?
- VAXOPEDIA – Why Do We Only Worry About Measles?
- VAXOPEDIA – Measles Propaganda from The Physicians for Informed Consent
- VAXOPEDIA – When Was the Last Measles Death in the United States?
- VAXOPEDIA – Measles Deaths in the 21st Century
- VAXOPEDIA – Graphs That Show Vaccines Don’t Work
- VAXOPEDIA – Did Better Hygiene and Sanitation Get Rid of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases?
- CDC – Vital Statistics of the United States: 1890-1938
- Historical Comparisons of Morbidity and Mortality for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in the United States
- Changes in the Age Distribution of Mortality Over the 20th Century
- The Role of Public Health Improvements in Health Advances: The 20th Century United States
- Pre-Vaccine Declines in Measles Mortality
- Theatricality and deception, weapons against the uninitiated
- “Vaccines didn’t save us” (a.k.a. “vaccines don’t work”): Intellectual dishonesty at its most naked
- Analysis of Anti-Vax Graphs
- Bad Chart Thursday: The TRUTH about Bad Measles Charts the Mainstream Media Is Suppressing
- Yes, vaccines did save us from disease: a graphic analysis
- The intellectual dishonesty of the “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit
- Vaccines saved lives – scientific evidence
- WHO – Vaccination greatly reduces disease, disability, death and inequity worldwide
Last Updated on February 28, 2019