Have you ever wondered just how many lives the MMR vaccine has saved?
It's actually a good question, as it helps reinforce just how important it is to get vaccinated and protected.
How Many Lives Has the MMR Vaccine Saved?
Well, it does if you do the math right...
"At best, the measles vaccine might save 5 lives/yr in the US, if we believe the CDC. Here’s how we do the calculation."
Steve Kirsch
Steve Kirsch, not surprisingly, gets his math very, very wrong when he makes the claim that measles vaccines will only save 5 lives each year in the United States - an 82% reduction.
Wait, the MMR vaccine is about 99% effective when given as two doses, so where does Kirsch get 82%?
"On the basis of the revised model for estimating measles cases and deaths and 2022 data, the estimated number of measles cases decreased 75%, from an estimated 36,463,000 in 2000 to 9,232,300 in 2022; the estimated annual number of measles deaths decreased 82%, from 772,900 in 2000 to 136,200 in 2022."
Progress Toward Measles Elimination — Worldwide, 2000–2022
Kirsch misinterprets a CDC study that simply states that measles deaths decreased 82% since 2000.
Now, since everyone in the world wasn't vaccinated, it is easy to see that the the CDC isn't saying that the measles vaccine effectiveness was 82%!
So how many lives have really have been saved by the measles vaccine?
Let's thank Steve Kirsch for highlighting the fact that measles containing vaccines have:
- prevented about 94 million deaths worldwide since 1974
- prevented about 57 million deaths worldwide since 2000
- prevented about 29,500 deaths in the United States since 1965
- prevented between 41,000 to 56,000 deaths in India just between 2010 to 2013
How do we know that?
There are the reports I have referenced below and I did the math!
Here's how we do the calculation...
In the pre-vaccine era, about 500 people, mostly children, used to die in the United States each year with measles. And now, because most people are vaccinated and protected, they don't!
So you don't actually have to do much math to know that the MMR vaccine prevents at least 500 measles deaths each year in the United States!
And if you don't believe that will happen today if we stop vaccinating and protecting our kids, just remember what happened during the measles epidemics of the early 1990s.
After a drop in measles vaccination rates, there were 55,622 cases of measles and 123 deaths in the United States between 1989 and 1991, a time when we had good nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, and health care…
Few people really doubt that the MMR vaccine works though.
Propaganda About Measles Deaths
So why are we now seeing anti-vaccine folks trying to downplay the risks of measles and the benefits of the MMR vaccine?
It's all triggered by the tragic death of an unvaccinated child in Canada.
Anti-vaccine folks only want you to be scared about vaccine side effects, not the risks of getting a vaccine preventable disease.
More on MMR Vaccine Benefits
- Why Are You Still Worried About the MMR Vaccine?
- Fact Checking the Idea That Measles Was Never a Scary Disease
- Why Are You Still Worried About the MMR Vaccine?
- But Did Anyone Die?
- How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Hurts Autistic Families
- Ask 8 Questions Before You Skip a Vaccine
- The benefits of the measles vaccine go beyond just protecting against measles, 2019 edition
- MMWR - Progress Toward Measles Elimination — Worldwide, 2000–2022
- Reported Cases and Deaths from Vaccine Preventable Diseases, United States
- Global immunization efforts have saved at least 154 million lives over the past 50 years
- Contribution of vaccination to improved survival and health: modelling 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization
- The impact of measles immunization campaigns in India using a nationally representative sample of 27,000 child deaths
- Health impact of measles vaccination in the United States
- The positive effects of the measles vaccine on long-term labor market outcomes
- Immunisation Saved At Least 154 Million Lives Over Past 50 Years
