Combating vaccine distrust with solid data

Immunization rates are falling. Vaccine disinformation, uncertainty, and skepticism seem to be at historic highs, extending from the COVID-19 vaccine to questioning the value and safety of other routine vaccinations.

Vaccine distrust will surely worsen with new Secretary of Health and Human Services, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., instilling doubts about immunizations. He failed his first test as a public health official with the current Texas measles outbreak stating false, inaccurate, and misleading information. Kennedy minimized the largest U.S. measles outbreak since 2019 (the largest in Texas in 30 years) causing the first measles death in a decade. The cases were almost exclusively among the unvaccinated.

Astonishingly, Kennedy didn’t immediately urge measles vaccination. Later, after rising criticism, he offered only a qualified immunization recommendation with mixed messages.

Mounting vaccine complacency is also a danger. With the elimination of vaccine-preventable diseases, so too were the memory of them. It’s difficult to appreciate the absence of what one does not see.

Most Americans have never seen a tragic case of smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, or measles. Young healthy people no longer die of vaccine-preventable diseases as a fact of everyday life.

According to a 2024 Gallup Poll, only 69 percent of parents now believe that it’s extremely or very important for children to be vaccinated (94 percent in 2001). Twenty percent believe that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they were designed to prevent. Thirteen percent believe that certain vaccines cause autism and 51 percent are unsure.

I offer again an updated calculation of how immunizations have eliminated diseases that once ravaged our country – a much-needed reminder given the current dreadful circumstances.

I took historical statistics from multiple reliable sources on the number of various infectious disease cases before the development of their respective vaccines. I then extrapolated these numbers to account for population growth to give a rough estimate of the number of cases that are now prevented. The number of present cases is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Without immunizations, each year in the U.S. there would be:

• 4,200 tetanus cases. Now there are about 30.
• 378,000 mumps cases. About 330 appeared in 2024.
• 401,000 hepatitis B cases. In 2021, 2,045 occurred.
• 661,000 diphtheria cases. Diphtheria is virtually eliminated in the U.S.
• 467,000 reported pertussis (whooping cough) cases. About 30,000 reported in 2024.
• 35,000 cases of paralytic polio. Polio is virtually nonexistent in the Western Hemisphere. Since 1979 there have been no cases of polio originating in the U.S.
• 82,000 rubella cases. Endemic rubella was eliminated in the U.S. by 2004. Infants with congenital rubella syndrome resulted in severe handicaps.
• 4 million chickenpox cases and 12,000 hospitalizations. Since the development of the vaccine in 1995, chickenpox cases have decreased by 97 percent.
• 1 million measles cases. Although once eradicated in the U.S, 285 cases were reported in 2024 (expect more in 2025 with outbreak).
• 22,000 life-threatening invasive Hemophilus influenzae bacterial infections in children less than five years of age, mostly meningitis. These diseases have decreased by 99 percent.
• 96,000 smallpox cases. Because of vaccination, smallpox was completely eradicated from the world in 1977.

A World Health Organization study reveals that global immunization efforts have saved an estimated 154 million lives over the past 50 years.

Extremely high immunization rates are necessary to maintain our “herd immunity” to these diseases and others. We’re at a dangerous tipping point.

Richard D. Feldman, M.D. is an Indianapolis family physician and former Indiana State Health Commissioner who served in the administration of Governor Frank O’Bannon.