The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish — ProPublica

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The Horrors That Could Lie Ahead if Vaccines Vanish

 

Researchers at Stanford University modeled how many people could die or be disabled in 25 years if vaccines for polio, measles, rubella or diphtheria were no longer available.

 

by Lucas Waldron and Patricia Callahan, with illustrations by Daniel Zender for ProPublica. Design by Zisiga Mukulu – ProPublica - March 27, 2026

 

Before vaccines, death and disability stalked children. Then shots turned once-common infections into something doctors only read about in textbooks.

 

When immunization rates drop, however, plagues from the past can come roaring back, as measles has in American communities where parents decided not to vaccinate their children.

 

Imagine what would happen if even the people who wanted shots couldn’t get them.

 

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded an antivaccination group, is considering changes that could prompt the handful of companies that make most shots for American children to stop selling them here. Over the last year, he has been transforming a government that long championed the lifesaving benefits of vaccines into one that questions their safety here and around the world.

 

Shortly after Kennedy was nominated, questions swirled over how he might overhaul America’s immunization system. Two Stanford University researchers wondered how many people would suffer if vaccination rates dropped or shots became entirely unavailable for four of the most infamous diseases: polio, measles, rubella and diphtheria.

 

Outbreaks often start when an American catches one of these illnesses abroad and returns home. So epidemiologists Mathew Kiang and Nathan Lo, who is also an infectious diseases doctor, built a model to simulate how the four contagions could spread from sick travelers based on each state’s vaccination rates.

 

Since a sizable chunk of the population is currently vaccinated, some of the infections wouldn’t get a foothold right away. But over time, as more babies are born and not vaccinated, a larger share of the population would become susceptible.

 

The professors ran thousands of simulations for each disease, producing a range of possible outcomes. From there, they figured out the average number of deaths and disabilities over a 25-year period.

 

Their model shows that at current vaccination rates, the nation is already teetering on the brink of an explosion in measles cases — one that would be virtually wiped out with just a 5% increase in vaccination. But if current rates drop by half, all four diseases could return.

 

The researchers’ modeling of the worst-case scenario assumes a quarter century where no one could get the shots. It doesn’t account for the likelihood of parents going abroad to find vaccines or politicians intervening to ensure drugmakers offer them again.

 

Full at:

 

https://projects.propublica.org/childhood-vaccines-deaths-modeling/