Fact or Fiction?
Continuing to Vaccinate
FACT: When we stop vaccinating, dangerous diseases come back.
In the U.S. we often forget how many people were once sick with diseases that we now prevent with vaccines.
Vaccines have been so successful, some people wonder if we still need vaccines.
Vaccine-preventable diseases still exist.
Very few people in the U.S. get sick from vaccine-preventable diseases because most children and adults are vaccinated. Many other countries are not as fortunate. Measles, hepatitis B, and other diseases still devastate many communities around the world. As long as a disease exists somewhere in the world, it can spread and cause outbreaks, especially in areas where people stop vaccinating. Smallpox is the only human disease that has been completely wiped out.
Vaccines save lives.
Globally, immunization prevents between 3.5 and 5 million deaths each year. A study by the CDC looked at children in the US born between 1994 and 2021. They found that vaccination will prevent about 472 million illnesses and 30 million hospital stays in their lives. It will also prevent 1,052,000 deaths during their lifetimes and save nearly $2.2 trillion in health care costs.
The measles vaccine alone prevented 56 million deaths worldwide from 2000 to 2021. In one year in just one state (Colorado), vaccines prevent over 30,000 infections and 8,500 hospital stays in children. If we stop vaccinating, we will quickly see an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.
Outbreaks can happen in communities with low vaccination rates.
History is clear: when people stop getting vaccinated, it puts everyone at risk for diseases. Research shows that children who are not vaccinated are often clustered in certain communities. This decreases the protection for everyone living in that area. Such “hot spots” are at high risk for infectious disease outbreaks.
For example, in 2008, a child who was not vaccinated became sick with measles. He got sick while on a trip to Europe and returned home to California. As a result, 11 other people got measles, including a baby who was hospitalized.
In 2019, 1,249 people in the U.S. got measles which can cause high fever and rash, ear infections, pneumonia, meningitis, and more. That was the highest number of infections in the US in nearly 20 years! Those cases were the result of 22 outbreaks across multiple states. 89% of people infected were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. 10% of the people who caught measles had to go to the hospital. These outbreaks happened in under-immunized, close-knit communities. It took almost a year to stop the spread of measles locally, but more cases have spread in the US since. Between 2019 and 2023, there were between 13 and 121 cases per year. The bottom line? Measles is still a risk in the U.S.
We’ve seen what can happen when people stop vaccinating; it takes a toll.
Diseases are just a plane ride away.
Vaccine-preventable diseases are just a plane ride away and can spread rapidly when they land in the US. The COVID-19 pandemic showed just how fast vaccine-preventable diseases can spread. In just a few months (January to March 2020), the outbreak grew from 41 cases to 472,000 cases. It ultimately led to a worldwide pandemic with 117 million cases by March 2021. It is important to keep vaccinating. We never know where and when we’ll be exposed to diseases like measles or COVID-19.