Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!

You can't make any conclusions by taking one year's total of measles cases and comparing it to the figures from another year. What matters are long-term trends.

From this site:


http://edcp.org/html/measles.html


"In the pre-vaccine era in the United States, an estimated three to four million cases of measles occurred annually, and approximately 500,000 cases and 500 deaths were reported annually, with epidemic cycles every two to three years."

Compare that to the number of measles cases occurring during more recent years, when children have been protected by vaccines. According to this report, during one recent period (1997-2001) there was only a total of 540 measles cases, and most of those were in people who came to the U.S. from other countries.


http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/381557


That overwhelming decline in measles cases can only be explained by the immense success of the measles vaccination program. And this success has extended to other childhood diseases such as mumps, pertussis and rubella - all diseases that made children miserable, sometimes had long-term health consequences and could kill.

"Albert Einstein once said that there were three types of lies--lies, damned lies and statistics!"

He might have been speaking of antivaxers. :)

Tweet