WhoWhatWhy - Thanks to vaccination rates that have been on the decline, measles is back and, according to a model from Stanford University researchers, the highly infectious disease that was all but eradicated in the US is here to stay even if the recent trend of vaccine hesitancy is halted.
If it is not, things will get really bad.
According to the model, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a 10-percent decrease in vaccination rates would lead to more than 10 million measles cases and thousands of deaths over the next 25 years.
That drop in vaccination rates does not seem far-fetched. Americans, especially conservatives, have become skeptical of vaccines in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic and an aggressive anti-vax campaign.
In fact, things could get even worse. The researchers estimate that, if vaccination rates were cut in half, the country would see more than 50 million new cases of measles that result in 10 million hospitalizations and nearly 160,000 deaths.
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