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.

National, State, Local Area Vaccination Coverage Among Children

The National Immunization Survey (NIS) estimates vaccination coverage among children aged 19–35 months for 50 states and selected local areas. Healthy People 2010 established vaccination coverage targets of 90% for individual vaccines in the 4:3:1:3:3:1† vaccine series and 80% for the series. This report describes the 2008 NIS coverage estimates for this series and individual vaccines, 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7), 2 doses of hepatitis A vaccine (HepA), and hepatitis B vaccination received in the first 3 days of life (HepB birth dose)among children born during January 2005–June 2007.