Falling Vaccine Rates Could Collapse our Economy

Back when I was in high school, I dreamed of becoming an epidemiologist and chasing down Ebola in Africa, Hantavirus in the Southwest US, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the UK. I had big plans to attend Emory University and train at the CDC just steps away, but although I was accepted, there was no way I could afford the tuition.

Alas, I had to go to a much smaller school with a bigger scholarship, but with no Public Health program (hence instead my degree in Mathematics). Many years later I did eventually get to pursue some of my epidemiological studies, completing a Graduate Certificate in Public Health from UT-Austin and attending the University of Michigan Summer Session in Epidemiology. And what I learned there is what makes me so nervous about the recent push to do away with vaccines and what that could end up doing to both our population and our economy.

In epidemiology, there’s this extremely important concept known as “herd immunity”. This is the percentage of people in a population who need to have immunity to stop a disease from spreading to vulnerable populations. The immune people essentially form a “wall”, preventing the disease from reaching anyone who could serve as another host.

Herd immunity rates range from needing immunity in 95% of the population for very contagious viruses such as measles and whooping cough, and around 80-85% for less contagious viruses such as polio and mumps. Herd immunity is why newborn babies rarely get sick and die of these diseases, even though they have not yet been vaccinated.

Credit: Courtesy of General Services Administration and National Institutes of Health

What happens when herd immunity is broken? Diseases are able to start spreading FAST. We saw this in Samoa in 2018 when fear of the measles vaccine spread due to a misunderstanding; by 2020 there were almost 6000 cases on the small island, and 83 people had died.

In the time before vaccines, women would often have 10+ children, and likely half of them would die in childhood due to these once-common diseases. But the population still kept growing due to the high birth rate. Now, the current birth rate in the US is 1.6 children per woman according to the CDC. If we lose herd immunity, these diseases could ravage our vulnerable populations, particularly children under age 5.

And it won’t take a significant drop in vaccine usage for this to happen – for a highly contagious disease like measles, if vaccine rates drop below 95% the herd immunity could collapse. This could leave your newborn children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren at huge risk with very little you could do.

So what does all of this have to do with our economy? The US economy is essentially a pyramid scheme; the population has to keep increasing to create more demand for products and housing and thus increase the GDP. If the population stops growing, we could begin to see economic contraction and significant deflation. Everything you own will be worth less, innovation will decline, and our military strength will decrease.

Pairing our already low US birth rate with a rising childhood death rate could be a recipe for economic disaster. If we allow the erosion of herd immunity, we won’t just see more sick kids in hospitals - we’ll also risk unraveling the very fabric of our economy. Protecting vaccines is not just about public health, it’s about protecting the future stability of our communities, our livelihoods, and the prosperity we hope to pass down to the next generation.

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