Most of the resurgence in new cases of diseases like Measles have been in adults, not children. This is likely due to adults not realizing that vaccines can have a limited lifespan, not from unvaccinated children spreading disease (otherwise we would see more children getting the disease.) Most cases in North America have been linked to people visiting from Europe, where the overall vaccination rates are far lower. Most new outbreaks are concentrated in countries like Venezuela, Peru, and some other South American countries – much of it traced back to Venezuela.
In the U.S., there are very few cases per year:
2010 63
2011 220
2012 55
2013 187
2014 667
2015 188
2016 86
2017 118
2018 (so far) 124
Death from measles is incredibly rare in the U.S. (the last death was in 2015.) Many outbreaks are driven by infection from someone overseas – vaccinating everyone in the U.S. wouldn’t help with that.
To put that rarity of death into perspective, ~50 people a year die from lightning strikes in the U.S.
Whooping couph is more severe – but most cases are in infants under 3 months of age and the TDAP vaccine is given in stages – none of them have been fully vaccinated at that point. It’s doubtful tiny infants are having play-dates with unvaccinated children. Also, the vaccine even if it takes doesn’t make one immune or unable to carry whooping couph – it just lessens severity. Cases are dropping worldwide overtime, and the severest outbreaks are in Africa. Areas with low access to antibiotics for treatment are more likely to see deaths.
Basically, for any disease, take the percent of the total U.S. population (or wherever you live) who are expected to get that disease in a given year. Then multiply that by the mortality rate for that disease. Multiply that by the odds that a vaccine doesn’t take in your child (5% is a good estimate, but vaccines vary by effectiveness.) The resultant odds are still a little higher than actual (the child still needs to encounter another person with the disease to catch it, after all) but you can see it’s a very, very remote risk for almost any disease you could plug in.
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