Mortality Figures

One of the TNA articles I found particularly interesting was the article on vaccines (“California’s Vaccination Mandate,” October 7 issue). The author indicates that the CDC is telling parents that the current measles mortality rate is 100 to 300 per 100,000 cases. The author further articulates that there have been only two measles deaths in the United States since 2003 and that the mortality rate in 1960 (just before the measles vaccine was developed) was .3 per 100,000, or less than one person per 300,000 cases. Lastly, the mortality rate for the early 1900s was also given, at 10 deaths per 100,000 cases. The question is then asked why the CDC is now citing such high mortality rates.

If the CDC is citing rates of 100 to 300 deaths per 100,000, that number does appear to be inflated. And, it is often said, one can get statistics to show just about anything. To get the actual present measles mortality figure, we need significant data that is not presented in the article: How many cases of measles have occurred since 2003 (with 2003 included)? I looked that up: 3,676 cases. If one does the fourth-grade arithmetic of 3,676 cases with two deaths, the mortality rate over that period of time comes out to 54 per 100,000 measles cases — 54! That number is over fives times higher than the mortality rate in the early 1900s, when sanitary conditions were much poorer than they are today.

Further, most years from 2003 to 2018, there have been less than 200 cases of measles per year (with 2011 and 2018 being exceptions, with 1,024 and 667 cases, respectively). In the year 2019 (which isn’t over yet), there have been 1,250 measles cases. Percentage-wise, that is a significant increase, though the number is still negligible when considering the population of the United States.

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