How Vaccinations Have Changed the World

A word of suggestion for all those who do not care about church that much anymore, but who, however, still like to celebrate all of its old festivities such as baptisms, weddings, and the like: how about, instead of celebrating your child’s christening, turning their first multi-dose vaccine injection into an occasion for a big family party? Yay! Anna-Luna is getting vaccinated! That’s one small shot for a child, one giant leap for mankind. Receiving a vaccination truly is a celebration of life — if not a precondition to survival. Every vaccine shot given is a spectacular recurring victory of civilization over diseases that used to carry off hundreds of thousands of people.

Data about the US serves to illustrate the long-term success rates of vaccinations: by what percentage did the number of infections fall in wake of the introduction of certain vaccinations? The figures speak for themselves and are comparable to improvements seen in Germany, as confirmed by the Robert Koch Institute. Diphtheria: reduced by 100 percent. Polio: 100 percent. Measles: 99.9 percent. Pertussis: 96.6 percent.

There is, however, danger in this enormous success: potentially deadly diseases such as measles have lost their terror. That is the only explanation for why outbreaks of measles can still occur in a country like Germany. All those who oppose vaccinations are actually free-riders: they can only afford this kind of nonsense because an overwhelming majority of people whom they look down on are getting vaccinations. If the entire anti-vaccination movement founded their own country in which all of its unvaccinated citizens could live together with their beloved viruses, most of them would be long dead by now.

This post is brought to you in collaboration with German news magazine DER SPIEGEL. The chart and text were first published by German journalist and author Guido Mingels. It is available as a book here. As always, our charts are free to use and share, just quote DER SPIEGEL/Statista as the source and include a backlink to the graphic's URL (this page).