Anti-Vax Myth #234934: Pre-Vaccine Medical Advances Account for Disease Elimination

Anti-Vax Myth: The decrease in the mortality rate that preceded the introduction of vaccines indicates that the elimination of infection are the result of non-vaccine-related bio-medical advances and that, therefore, vaccines  are ineffective.

The following response uses measles as a representative vaccine-preventable disease.

Now, its true that the mortality rate from measles decreased in the years prior to the introduction of the measles vaccine.

So between the years 1900-1950 we see measles deaths drop from roughly 10 per 100,000 people to somewhere around 1 per 100,000 people.

This means that in a country like the United States, we'd saw about 7600 people die every year in 1900 (based on a population of ~76 million) from measles and about 1500 people die from measles in 1950 (based on a population of ~150 million).

This is all without the measles vaccine and the data is not hidden.  See for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2024011/pdf/pubhealthreporig00184-0087.pdf

So the question we are debating is, how can we judge whether the measles vaccine is effective when there has already been an incredible reduction in deaths caused by measles?

Well here is the answer:

Though the death or mortality rate declined between 1900-1950 due to medical (non-vaccine-related) advances, the number of measles infections and deaths in the years preceding the introduction of the vaccines are staggeringly high in comparison to levels achieved immediately following the introduction of the measles vaccine.

Between 1944 and the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963, the average infection rate was approximately 500,000 cases per year.

After the introduction of the measles vaccine the numbers drop to an average of 50,000 cases between 1968-1980 - a reduction of 90%.

After the introduction of the booster or second dosage during an outbreak in 1990, we see measles become virtually eliminated (dropping into the few hundreds cases per year) in the USA.

There are still 2 or 3 deaths per 1000 cases of measles (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15106083) but because measles cases are below 1000 per annum generally there is usually 0 deaths in any given year (maybe 1 death every couple of years).

So let's compare again.  In 1950 we saw about 1500 people die from measles, in 1968, a few years after the measles vaccine introduced we see the death rate drop by 90% to 100-150.  After the second dose, we see measles eliminated and the death rate drop to virtually zero.

See here for graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles

So now we can see that though medical advances did drop the number of measles deaths from 7600 to 1500, the introduction of the measles vaccine took that 1500 number  from 1950 (which according to today's population would actually be more like 3000 deaths per year given the population is ~310 million) and reduced it to 2 or 3 deaths per 1000 cases (less than 1 death a year).

We can also talk, however, about the fact that even though a reduction in measles deaths followed between 1900-1950, the fact that hundreds of thousands of measles cases continued until the invention of the vaccine meant that people still had to suffer from a measles infection.  Even though the risk of dying was significantly lower in 1950 than 1900, 500,000 people still suffered from the measles until the vaccine all but eliminated the disease.  Here's a blurb about measles infection from Wikipedia:

The classic signs and symptoms of measles include four-day fevers [the 4 D's] and the three Cs—cough, coryza (head cold), and conjunctivitis (red eyes)—along with fever and rashes. The fever may reach up to 40 °C (104 °F)

Complications with measles are relatively common, ranging from mild and less serious complications such as diarrhea to more serious ones such as pneumonia (either direct viral pneumonia or secondary bacterialpneumonia),[10] otitis media,[11] acute encephalitis (and very rarely SSPE—subacute sclerosing panencephalitis),[12] and corneal ulceration (leading to corneal scarring).[13] Complications are usually more severe in adults who catch the virus.[14]

Now, compare the symptoms of measles, the possibility of complications and even death (in rare instances), with the fact that "Adverse reactions to vaccination are rare, with fever and pain at the injection site being the most common. Life-threatening adverse reactions occur in less than one per million vaccinations (<0.0001%)."

Addendum: Can living a healthy lifestyle overcome dangerous diseases?

No amounts of nutrition, exercise, hydration, and rest can hope to overcome dangerous diseases.

Just ask the nearly extinct native population of the Americas or the Pacific Islands that were wiped off the face of the planet through contact with Europeans.  Many of these individuals lived comparatively idyllic lives in comparison to the Europeans that landed on their shores - healthy bodies accustomed to proper nutrition, exercise, hydration and rest.  And yet... tens of millions died in a most painful manner thanks to an exposure they could not predict (any more than we can predict who among us might have become infected from a trip overseas, etc...)

From Wikipedia - but I also recommend Jared Diamond's book Gun, Germs, and Steel:

Numerous other diseases were brought to Native American tribes, including measles, scarlet fever, typhoid, typhus, influenza, pertussis (whooping cough), tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, chickenpox and sexually transmitted diseases.^[4] Each of these diseases brought destruction through sweeping epidemics, involving illness and extensive death. Many Native American tribes experienced extensive depopulation, averaging 25–50 percent of tribal life lost due to disease. Additionally, singular tribes also neared extinction after facing severely destructive spread of disease.^[4] The significant toll that this took on Native populations is expounded upon in the article Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. A specific example of this devastation was Cortes' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population was estimated to have been around 25-30 million. Fifty years after his arrival, the Mexican population was cut down to 3 million, attributable mainly to infectious disease. Here we see the real effect of the invasion of the Europeans in the new world. With no natural immunity to help them in their fight against these pathogens, the native Americans were massacred. The eminent Yale historian David Brion Davis says this was "the greatest genocide in the history of man. “Yet it's increasingly clear that most of the carnage had nothing to do with European barbarism. The worst of the suffering was caused not by swords or guns but by germs”.^[6]