It has been half a century or more since many of the inoculations became routine in the United States, and the experience of having these illnesses has been largely erased from public memory. Questions today about the risk-benefit ratio of vaccines might just be a product of the vaccines’ own success.
Here is what people should know about six once-common illnesses that vaccines have contained for decades….
Measles
Measles is not a mild illness, particularly for children under 5. It can cause a high fever, coughing, conjunctivitis and rashes, and if it leads to pneumonia or encephalitis — brain swelling — it can quickly become lethal. Before the vaccine was licensed in the United States in 1963, almost every child had contracted measles by age 15. Tens of thousands of measles patients were hospitalized each year, and between 400 and 500 of them died….
About 280,000 kindergarten students in the United States are now unprotected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and measles — which was eliminated from the United States in 2000 — has since seen a resurgence. There have been 16 measles outbreaks in 2024, compared with four outbreaks in 2023. In communities where the spread is rampant, even a vaccinated child can occasionally contract the disease, though their symptoms are generally less severe.
Diphtheria
The toxin driving the disease is produced by a strain of bacterium in respiratory droplets and works by killing healthy tissues, which can lead to difficulty breathing and swallowing, especially among young children with smaller airways. It can also gravely damage the cardiac and nervous systems, resulting in heart failure or paralysis.
Even with treatment, one in 10 people who have respiratory diphtheria die from it, according to the C.D.C…
Tetanus
A fully developed tetanus infection can be an alarming sight: fists clenched, back arched, legs rigid from extreme, excruciating muscle spasms that last several minutes. Extreme fluctuations in blood pressure. A racing heart. Neck and stomach muscles tight enough to impair breathing….
Treatment for tetanus must be immediate, and up to 20 percent of people who become infected will die…
Mumps
The disease is dangerously insidious: It can lie dormant for up to a month before symptoms appear, and most people are infectious before their salivary glands begin to swell. Complications are more common in adults than children, but they can include inflammation in the ovaries and testicles — which can cause infertility or sterility — or in the brain and spinal cord, which can put patients at risk of seizures and strokes…
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