The Center for Unbiased Science and Health, with support from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), has developed an online tool that visually shows the difference in risks between the vaccine and the disease it prevents. The tool was designed to help people better understand the risks and benefits of vaccines.

As measles outbreaks continue in the USA, this easy-to-use tool can help parents visualize the risks of measles versus the vaccine so that we can end these outbreaks. Maybe, just maybe, it might convince parents who are confused by the internet claims about vaccines and the diseases they prevent to get the vaccines for their kids.

This post will look at two of these charts and what they visualize.

Vaccine and disease risks online tool

The first chart we are going to examine is for measles and the MMR vaccine, for measles, mumps, and rubella. Because of the current measles outbreaks in the USA, this will probably be the most searched.

The blocks show the relative sizes of the risks per 100,000 individuals. On the right side, it shows tiny boxes for the known risks from the MMR vaccine. Febrile seizure (33 per 100,000 vaccinations) and thrombocytopenia (2.5 per 100,000) are mild and usually temporary side effects of the MMR vaccine. Encephalitis is a more serious risk of the MMR vaccine, but it occurs in just 1 out of 1,000,000 vaccinations.

On the left side, there are large boxes representing all of the risks of measles. I know that a lot of anti-vaccine activists insist on minimizing the risks of the disease, but it’s far from the truth. Here are the more serious complications of measles:

• Hospitalization (20,000 per 100,000)
• Pneumonia (5,000 per 100,000)
• Encephalitis (100 per 100,000)
• Death (100 per 100,000)
• SSPE (7 per 100,000). SSPE is a rare chronic, progressive encephalitis that primarily affects children and young adults. SSPE results from a persistent measles virus infection before the age of 2. It is followed by approximately 6-15 asymptomatic years before the first symptoms of SSPE appear. Some researchers think the asymptomatic period is around 5-8 years after the initial disease. Gradually, the disease progresses with psychological and neurological deterioration, which can include personality changes, seizures, and coma. It is ultimately fatal in nearly 100% of cases.

As you can easily see in the chart, the serious complications of the disease far outweigh the relatively small risks of the vaccine. This is not a scare tactic; these are scientific facts from unbiased medical sources.

MMR vaccine vs other childhood risks

Let’s compare the MMR vaccine risks to common childhood risks such as car accidents and drowning.

For serious outcomes, the MMR vaccine has a risk of 0.1 per 100,000 vaccinations (or 1.0 per 1,000,000) for encephalitis. On the other hand, drowning death has a risk of 3.1 per 100,000 children, and automobile accident death has a risk of 2.6 per 100,000. A typical child has a 57 times greater risk of dying from drowning or an automobile accident compared to the serious risk of the MMR vaccine.

Some anti-vaxxers like to argue that they would support vaccines if they were 100% safe. That’s an impossible standard in medicine.

If your child breaks their leg, you would take them to the hospital to have the break repaired, because you want your child to run and play again. But there are significant risks of reducing a fracture, and I bet that every parent will authorize the doctors to fix that injury.

Medicine is based on risks and benefits; that is why we rely on science-based medicine to determine each for every drug, procedure, and vaccine used.

The risks of vaccines are small; they are far outweighed by the benefits of preventing infectious diseases and their serious complications. You don’t give your child the MMR vaccine to prevent a simple rash; it’s to prevent measles, which can kill a child.

Use this online tool to convince someone of the benefits of vaccines vs the risks. Anti-vaccine activists love to minimize the risks of the disease and overstate the risks of the vaccine. This tool makes it clear that the risks of the disease are far greater than the risks of vaccines.

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