Top Pro & Con Arguments

Pro

Vaccines eradicated smallpox and have nearly eradicated other diseases, however vaccine-preventable diseases have not disappeared so mandated vaccination is still necessary.

Children are no longer vaccinated against smallpox because the disease no longer exists due to vaccination. The last case of smallpox in the United States was in 1948; the last case in the world was 1977 in Somalia. However, earlier in the twentieth century, there were 29,004 deaths from smallpox yearly in the United States. [74] [75]

According to the WHO, “Wild poliovirus cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350 000 cases in more than 125 endemic countries to 6 reported cases in 2021.” The disease now only exists in two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. [140]

Diphtheria killed 21,053 people yearly; measles killed 530,217 people yearly; mumps killed 162,344 people yearly; rubella killed 47,745 people yearly; and Hib (a bacterium that causes pneumonia and meningitis) killed 20,000 people yearly in the twentieth century United States; by 2012 each of these diseases were decreased by 99% because of vaccinations. [75]

However, the CDC notes that many vaccine-preventable diseases are still in the United States or “only a plane ride away.” Between Jan. 1, 2019 and May 17, 2019, there were 880 individual measles cases reported in 24 states (compared to 372 cases in all of 2018). Of those, 44 cases were directly imported from 12 other countries, including Philippines, Ukraine, Israel, and Thailand. According to the WHO, in Jan. 2019 alone, there were 1,802 cases of measles in Philippines, 13,760 in Ukraine, 290 in Israel, and 797 in Thailand. [76] [130] [131] [132]

UNICEF reported that, globally, 453,000 children die from rotavirus, 476,000 die from pneumococcus (the bacterium that causes pneumonia, meningitis, and blood infections), 199,000 die from Hib, 195,000 die from pertussis (whooping cough), 118,000 die from the measles, and 60,000 die from tetanus each year, all vaccine-preventable diseases. [52]

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