Unsubstantiated fear about vaccines has led to increased rates of unvaccinated children in some surprising corners of the United States, like exclusive New York City private schools.
But parents would probably not be so quick to leave their children unvaccinated if they remembered what life was like before vaccines, when hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. - many of them children - died each year from diseases like measles that are now nearly obsolete. Even varicella, better-known as chicken pox, used to be a significant threat.
Graphic designer Leon Farrant used data from the CDC and JAMA to illustrate that the public health importance of vaccines cannot be overstated. Has other medical care improved since the pre-vaccine era? Of course.
But no one who has suffered through measles or mumps would choose illness and the very real risk of death over vaccines, which are an almost perfect solution to some of the greatest health crises humanity has ever known.