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No, it's just that the memories of older people are not so good:
Dramatic declines in morbidity have been reported for the nine
vaccine-preventable diseases for which vaccination was universally
recommended for use in children before 1990 (excluding hepatitis B,
rotavirus, and varicella) (Table_2). Morbidity associated with smallpox
and polio caused by wild-type viruses has declined 100% and nearly 100%
for each of the other seven diseases.
Smallpox. Smallpox is the only disease that has been eradicated. During
1900-1904, an average of 48,164 cases and 1528 deaths caused by both the
severe (variola major) and milder (variola minor) forms of smallpox were
reported each year in the United States (1). The pattern in the decline
of smallpox was sporadic. Outbreaks of variola major occurred
periodically in the first quarter of the 1900s and then ceased abruptly
in 1929. Outbreaks of variola minor declined in the 1940s, and the last
case in the United States was reported in 1949. The eradication of
smallpox in 1977 enabled the discontinuation of prevention and treatment
efforts, including routine vaccination. As a result, in 1985 the United
States recouped its investment in worldwide eradication every 26 days (1).
Polio. Polio vaccine was licensed in the United States in 1955. During
1951-1954, an average of 16,316 paralytic polio cases and 1879 deaths
from polio were reported each year (9,10). Polio incidence declined
sharply following the introduction of vaccine to less than 1000 cases in
1962 and remained below 100 cases after that year. In 1994, every dollar
spent to administer oral poliovirus vaccine saved $3.40 in direct
medical costs and $2.74 in indirect societal costs (14). The last
documented indigenous transmission of wild poliovirus in the United
States occurred in 1979. Since then, reported cases have been either
vaccine-associated or imported. As of 1991, polio caused by wild-type
viruses has been eliminated from the Western Hemisphere (16). Enhanced
use of the inactivated polio vaccine is expected to reduce the number of
vaccine-associated cases, which averaged eight cases per year during
1980-1994 (17).
Measles. Measles vaccine was licensed in the United States in 1963.
During 1958-1962, an average of 503,282 measles cases and 432
measles-associated deaths were reported each year (9-11). Measles
incidence and deaths began to decline in 1965 and continued a 33-year
downward trend. This trend was interrupted by epidemics in 1970-1972,
1976-1978, and 1989-1991. In 1998, measles reached a provisional record
low number of 89 cases with no measles-associated deaths (13). All cases
in 1998 were either documented to be associated with international
importations (69 cases) or believed to be associated with international
importations (CDC, unpublished data, 1998). In 1994, every dollar spent
to purchase measles-containing vaccine saved $10.30 in direct medical
costs and $3.20 in indirect societal costs (7).
http://www.cdc.gov/epo/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm
Regards
DanG
ira wrote:
> I received this in my email and I wonder how many others are old enough
> to remember what some of us call the good old days. Did the boomers
> cause all of our current problems?
>
>
>> >>Subject: Looking back...
>> >>Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 16:31:15 EST
>> >>
>> >>Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we
>> have.
>> >>
>> >>My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same
>> >>cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to
>> >>get food poisoning. My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter
>> AND I used to eat it raw sometimes too, but I can't remember getting
>> E-coli. As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air
>> bags. Riding in the back of
>> a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs,
>> toys and rooms were painted with bright colored lead based paint. We
>> often
>> chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.
>> We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets,
>> and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the
>> garden hose and not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning
>> and play
>> all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was
>> able to reach us all day.
>> We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt.
>> We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers,
>> and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun
>> was not available. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar
>> soda,
>> but we were never overweight; we were always outside playing. Little
>> League had
>> tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn
>> to deal
>> with disappointment.
>> Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they
>> failed a
>> grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That generation
>> produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem solvers.
>> We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we
>> learned how to deal with it all.
>> Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead
>> ofa pristine pool (talk about boring).
>> The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and
>> a pager was the school PA system.
>> We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of
>> high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training
>> athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I
>> can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they
>> tell us how much safer we are now.
>> Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE
>> must be much harder than gym.
>> Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the
>> halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot.
>> How much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have
>> sued the school system.
>> Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and staying in
>> detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention for out
>> the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.
>> I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14-year-olds an abortion
>> or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they
>> did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started
>> getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then.
>> Remember school nurses? Ours wore a regulation cap and everything.I
>> just can't recall how bored we were without computers,
>> PlayStation,Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations. I must be
>> repressing that memory as I try to rationalizethrough the denial of
>> the dangers thatcould have befallen us as we trekked off each day
>> about a mile down the road to some guy's vacant lot, built forts out
>> of branches and pieces of plywood,made trails, and fought over who got
>> to be the Lone Ranger. What was that property owner thinking, letting
>> us play onthat lot?
>> He should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the
>> property,
>> complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm.
>> Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when Igot
>> that bee sting? I could have been killed!
>> We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant
>> construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent
>> bottle of Mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a
>> trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle
>> of antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor
>> for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
>> We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we
>> got our butt spanked (physical abuse) here too ... and then we got our
>> butt spanked again when we got home.
>> Kids choked down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with
>> Tonka trucks (remember why Tonka trucks were made tough... it wasn't
>> so that they could take the rough Berber in the family room).
>> Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure
>> that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went
>> on two-week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the
>> danger they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family
>> tent. Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even
>> know that mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one
>> without an automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my
>> parents? Of course my parents weren't the only psychos.
>> I recall Donny Reynolds from next-door coming over and doing his
>> tricks on the front stoop just before he fell off. Little did his Mom
>> know that she could have owned our house? Instead she picked him up
>> and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
>> To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they
>> were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known
>> that we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes?
>> We were obviously so duped by so many social ills, that we didn't even
>> notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!
>> How did we survive?
>
>
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