History of Vaccines Blog
More deaths from measles than from Ebola have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, most of them in children. So which disease is worse? Which should be addressed first? Read more...
June 21, 2019
Infectious diseases have been with humans from the very beginning, and they travel with humans to this day. What's worse, our intelligence allows us to spread these diseases farther and faster than ever before. Read more...
June 16, 2019
The number of measles cases in the United States is the highest it has been in a lifetime, and there are no signs that it is slowing down. Read more...
May 18, 2019
A report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report presents evidence that the cases of measles in the United States in 2019 are historic. Not since 1994 has measles infected so many people in the country. Even more concerning is that measles was declared eliminated in 2000 in the United States. Read more...
May 15, 2019
Dr. Najera, the editor of History of Vaccines, has been interviewed by news outlets about the current measles epidemic (outbreak) in the United States. Read more...
May 3, 2019
Buzzfeed News recently made an assessment of the 2020 presidential candidates’ stances on vaccination. They concluded that all of the declared candidates so far are in agreement that parents should vaccinate their children when vaccination is recommended. Some of their statements were nuanced, while others made blanket statements of approval of vaccines. Read more...
April 29, 2019
C-SPAN recently posted this video of a Public Health Service and Merck collaboration to inform the people about measles back in 1964. It's about 20 minutes long, and gives us a glimpse of what public health authorities were informing the public about when it came to measles. Read more...
April 27, 2019
A quick video from NBC's "Stay Tuned" on YouTube explaining what vaccines are and what the anti-vaccine movement is. Read more...
April 21, 2019
Some of the misinformation regarding vaccines includes an argument that vaccines have not been tested against a saline placebo in a double-blinded randomized clinical trial. This misinformation is aimed at confusing the wealth of evidence regarding the safety and effectiveness of immunizations. In this blog post, we will explain what a blinded randomized clinical trial is, when this study design has been used in the development of immunizations, and why it is not used as often anymore. Read more...