Saturday, January 24, 2015

The devastating impact of vaccine deniers, in one measles chart

There were 644 new measles cases in 27 states last year, according to the CDC. That's the biggest annual number we've seen in nearly a quarter-century. The vast majority of people who contracted the disease were unvaccinated, including the dozens of cases related to an outbreak at Disneyland in Orange County, California, which is basically Ground Zero in our current epidemic of anti-vaccine hysteria.

A 2014 AP-GfK survey found that only 51 percent of Americans were confident that vaccines are safe and effective, which is similar to the proportion who believe that houses can be haunted by ghosts.

But the latest CDC data illustrate the troubling resurgence of a disease that, as of 2000, had been declared eliminated.

See the chart from the Washington Post HERE.

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