Polio, whooping cough, and measles: all diseases that are long gone, right? Think again.
These deadly diseases were on the verge of extinction; but now they are returning with an unparalleled ruthlessness, and are reappearing all over the world. Will these life-threatening diseases impact our population? Or can they be stopped once and for all with our increasingly advanced technology of the digital age?
In the early 1900s, roughly 9,000 children in the United States died every year as a result of whooping cough. Whooping cough, or pertussis, is a contagious bacterial disease that mainly affects babies who are too young to get the vaccination. Whooping cough is so named because of its characteristic convulsive coughs and whooping sound. A vaccine for whooping cough was invented during the 1940s, which caused reported cases to drop almost completely. However, in 2012 alone, 48,277 cases were reported to the CDC.
Before the 1950s, around 3 to 4 million Americans were infected with the Measles, and over 400 died annually. Measles, or Rubeola, is a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by a virus. In the 1950s, the United States developed a vaccine and a program to vaccinate an entire population, which together nearly eradicated the virus. Even though the disease was declared to have been eradicated from the US in 2000, the CDC still reports that an average of 60 people per year are diagnosed with Measles in the United States. This year in particular, the numbers are higher than average.
From the late 1940s to early 1950s, in the United States alone, polio crippled approximately 35,000 people every year. Even one of our presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was diagnosed with polio. It is an infectious disease caused by a virus that lives in the throat and intestinal tract, and as in the case of our former president, can cause paralysis. In 1955, Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, and by 1979, the country became polio free. The same cannot be said, however, for the rest of the world, where polio is still a disease at large.
When told about the prevelence of diseases like polio, measles, and whooping cough today, Sophie Gerber ’16 exclaimed, “I never realized any of these horrifying diseases still existed, and it shocks and scares me that they are still around.”
Experts believe the recurrence of these diseases in the US is in part due to a percentage of Americans who do not believe in vaccination. Some parents, according to Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, refuse to believe that the diseases haven’t been eradicated. Others feel that these vaccines pose other health risks and therefore do not get their children vaccinated.
Paloma Stafford ’16 says, “The parents who do not vaccinate their children are irresponsible and are subjecting their children to unnecessary risks that could greatly endanger them.” On the contrary, Victoria Morris ’14 states, “I don’t get my flu vaccine: I’m too lazy, and I don’t care, really. To be honest, I don’t usually think about it until I get sick.”
Globalization is another significant factor at hand in the resurgence of these diseases. Air travel and other forms of international transportation result in certain diseases entering the country that were not present before.
Is the US at risk of falling victim to these diseases again? If children continue to go to school unvaccinated, it just might be.