by | May 6, 2019 | Health & Vaccines | 0 comments
The claim that measles kills 1 in 1,000 is false. Before the vaccine, it was 1 in 10,000. And vaccination has actually increased the case fatality rate.
When reporting on measles outbreaks in the US, the mainstream media routinely tell the public that the death rate from viral infection is 1 in 1,000. The source for this regularly repeated claim is the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which does indeed state on its website that “For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.” But that is a blatant and deliberate lie.
Although the media don’t tell you this, most of the decline in measles mortality seen during the 20th century occurred before the vaccine was introduced in 1963 and was due to an increasing standard of living, including better nutrition. By the time the vaccine came into use, measles deaths had become relatively rare, averaging about 500 per year.
Although the mortality rate had declined dramatically prior to the vaccine, the incidence of measles remained fairly steady. Almost everyone had been infected by the time they reached adulthood, resulting in long-lasting immunity. Furthermore, because the virus was still circulating, re-exposures provided a natural boosting, such that having measles during childhood typically conferred a robust immunity that was lifelong in duration.
Every year, an estimated 3 million to 4 million people were infected with measles. However, most cases were benign and not reported. The number of reported cases annually was about 500,000.
That’s where the “1 in 1,000” figure comes from. It’s the number of deaths per reportedcases. The CDC, of course, knows full well that most cases were not reported and that the actual fatality rate was 0.1 in 1,000. As the Institute of Medicine (IOM) observed in a 1994 report, it was actually “1 per 10,000 cases”.
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