Most of today’s generation of Americans didn’t live through the horrors of communicable childhood diseases. If they had, perhaps those diseases wouldn’t be on the rise again.
To recount what once was common knowledge, in the decade leading up to the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963, an average of 503,282 cases and 432 deaths were reported each year, while 48,000 were hospitalized and 1,000 developed a swelling of the brain known as encephalitis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 1934, 265,269 cases of whooping cough were reported in the United States. About 9,000 deaths were reported annually until a vaccine was available in the 1940s, according to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
These were horrible and ever-present realities lurking in the shadows. Parents everywhere were grateful for immunizations that drastically lowered the risks of their children acquiring these diseases, as well as many others.
Measles outbreak
But today, many parents are opting their children out of these protections, and the diseases are re-emerging.
The nation is in the middle of a measles outbreak that, as of the time of this writing, has resulted in 1,277 confirmed cases across 38 states and the District of Columbia. In Utah, nine cases were detected as of Monday. Nationwide, this is the worst outbreak since 1992.
The Community Vaccine Forum, a group consisting of Utah medical, pediatric and health organizations, released a report this month on how declining vaccination rates in Utah are impacting children entering schools.
The report says those rates for new kindergarteners in Utah have dropped from about 98% in the 2009-2010 school year to 89% in 2023-2024.
“Six out of 10 Utah schools are below the CDC measles target of 95% for adequate community protection,” it said. “Four out of 10 are below 90% and are likely to experience an outbreak if an infected child enters the school.”
In a recent meeting with the Deseret News/KSL editorial board, forum members said those figures are approximately the same for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTaP), polio and chickenpox immunizations.
Whooping cough
The CDC reports 8,485 cases of whooping cough in the United States so far in 2025. The disease is most deadly for infants and young children. The Associated Press reports that two babies in Louisiana and one 5-year-old child in Washington state have died this year.
These outbreaks correlate with a decline in kindergarten vaccinations nationwide. The forum’s report said 98.3% of Utah kindergarteners were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella in the 2005-06 school year. By 2023-24, it had dropped to 88.8%. That took Utah from among the highest states for vaccination to among the lowest.
“When measles vaccination levels for a school fall to 90%, the chance of a community outbreak following the arrival of a child with measles rises to 51%,” the report said. “As vaccination levels continue to decline, the likelihood of an outbreak increases sharply.”
Exemptions are growing
Utah students must be vaccinated before being enrolled in schools. But there are exemptions, and Utah has seen a growing number of parents seeking these. Many of these are granted for religious reasons. Utah does not require any documentation regarding church affiliation in order to receive such an exemption. Officials said these have gone from 0.7% of requests in the 2017-18 school year to 12.5% last year.
The report said “personal” reasons make up 84.6%, or the largest share of exemptions in Utah. Exemptions also are granted for medical reasons, which made up 2.9% during the last school year. Some exemptions certainly must be maintained, to allow parents to make informed decisions. But the trend is troubling.
Medical officials blame misinformation and a growing sense of distrust in institutions, including the medical establishment, for these declines. Many still believe in discredited reports linking vaccines with autism, while others mistakenly conflate time-honored and tested childhood immunizations with more recent Covid-19 immunizations which entered the realm of partisan politics. A state survey of those seeking exemptions found the largest percentage was concerned about vaccination safety.
The truth is vaccinations are subject to constant testing for safety.
Vaccine safety
As Healthychildren.org reports, hundreds of large-scale studies worldwide over several decades show that recommended vaccinations are safe and do not cause diabetes, infertility, autism or developmental delay.
What is clear, however, is that the failure to immunize puts entire communities at risk for deadly diseases that once used to plague parents and children everywhere.
The CDC reports that 92% of this year’s cases involve people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is not known.
The Washington Post reports that “at least 155 people have been hospitalized and three people have died of measles-related complications this year. The dead include two otherwise healthy children in Texas and a man in New Mexico, all of whom were unvaccinated.”
Americans cannot afford, through negligence, to allow these long-controlled diseases to rear up and begin attacking again.