A Glimpse of the World Before Vaccines
September 29, 2019 in News by RBN Staff
source: thevaccinereaction.org
by Marco Cáceres
A common historical theme has emerged in many recent articles about this year’s measles outbreak in the United States. It is perhaps best exemplified by the headline in an opinion piece in National Geographic magazine: “The world before vaccines is a world we can’t afford to forget.” The theme is meant to emphasize the importance of vaccination in “conquering” infectious disease and to warn that the days in which diseases such as smallpox, polio and measles ran rampant could return if vaccination were not continually emphasized and mandated by government.1 2 3 4 5
It is an interesting assumption. But it is difficult to know for sure just what would happen because there were obviously other factors that led to the decreasing rates in infectious diseases in the U.S. A big one, of course, was sanitation. It is easy to overlook the role of sanitation because it is taken for granted by many Americans. Most towns and cities in the U.S. have clean drinking water and regular garbage collection, while most homes in the U.S. have indoor plumbing and running toilets.6
Because of the vast improvements in sanitation, personal hygiene also improved, and that also contributed to the decline in infectious diseases. Filth has been a major cause of infectious diseases of the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts, including diarrhea and dysentery, typhoid, croup, bronchitis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, as well as skin diseases such as scabies and ringworm.7
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) attributes the declines in infectious diseases to several factors, including sanitation, vaccination, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines and technological advances in detecting and monitoring infectious diseases. It is worth noting that sanitation is the first factor on its list.8
According to the CDC: “The 19th century shift in population from country to city that accompanied industrialization and immigration led to overcrowding in poor housing served by inadequate or nonexistent public water supplies and waste-disposal systems. These conditions resulted in repeated outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, TB, typhoid fever, influenza, yellow fever, and malaria.”
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