The anti-vaccination folk will look at an outbreak of disease (like the mumps outbreak in the Mid-West) and say, "See! See! Vaccinations are useless!".
Tara Smith at Aetiology has written an elegant post, outlining how epidemiologists evaluate effectiveness of vaccines..
The unvaccinated population acquired disease at 10 times the rate of the vaccinated population overall, so while being vaccinated was no guarantee of protection, it's a damn good gamble.
The theory behind mass vaccination is not that if enough people are vaccinated, an epidemic will be prevented even though everyone is not vaccinated. Our oldest exhibited severe symptoms after getting the first shot in the DPT series. We told the doctor that we did not want to continue with the triad and to give him only the DT part, and the doctor insisted that we were alarmists; and maybe a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but we did not back down. With a different pediatrician with the younger child, she asked about potential allergic reactions in his older brother, then gave him the limited vaccine.
Posted by: Bill | Monday, May 01, 2006 at 01:54 PM