The World-Changing Impact of Vaccines
Back in 2015, Tynan DeBold and Dov Friedman created a series of graphics for the WSJ showing the impact of the introduction of vaccines in the US. Here’s the infographic for measles:
And for polio:
Vaccines are in the running for the greatest human invention ever. You can see the rest of the charts (for hepatitis A, mumps, pertussis, rubella, and smallpox) here.
See also The stunning success of vaccines in America, in one chart.
Comments 7
thread
latest
popular
If a talented graphic designer put vaccine data into a beautiful simple graphic designed to be displayed in pediatric exam rooms lives would be saved.
I wonder what RFK, Jr. would say about this chart?
This is a great example of visual storytelling. The data is exactly the same as that in the simple bar chart in the linked Vox article, and yet significantly more compelling in this form. Love it.
I enjoy walks in old cemeteries. Once, years ago, I took one in a pioneer era cemetery in Sacramento, and the number graves for babies and young kids was pretty shocking. It's a river city, so it's not surprising that cholera was a problem, but this looked more like measles, diphtheria, etc. pretty stark example of "vaccines save lives, yo."
Ask your older relatives if they had any brothers or sisters you've never heard of before — there's a good chance you had at least one uncle, great aunt, or a first cousin twice removed who died as an infant or young child. (Mine was an aunt.) It was such a regular occurance in the US until relatively recently.
I was reviewing death records from the 1800s in a small coastal town in Massachusetts, and literally every page has at least a few children younger than 10 that died of vaccine preventable diseases. Also a lot of stillbirths and deaths from premature births. The only reason we don’t marvel every day at modern medicine is that we’ve gotten complacent.
I particularly like the one for mumps. It starts with the year of the vaccine because mumps was so common before that they didn't even really keep track. of it.
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!