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Note: These counts are based on the average incidence and mortality for each disease in the years prior to the introduction of vaccines in the United States. Those rates are applied to the current US population. The world estimates are more speculative in that they apply the US rates to the current world population. This is intended to give a rough approximation of the total number of cases and deaths for each disease.
We plan to add scientifically validated estimates of adverse effects. If you have input on side effects or suggestions for improving approximations of disease incidence, email us at Info@scienceaccountability.org.
Rationale for the rate model (what the tool is doing)
Goal: provide an order-of-magnitude, defensible upper-bound estimate of how much acute disease, chronic sequelae/cancers, and deaths would occur if vaccine-preventable diseases returned under a selected vaccine schedule.
Core simplification :
- For each disease stream, we use an annual baseline incidence (or outcome) rate expressed per 100,000 denominator per year.
- We convert that rate to expected counts for a selected population:
- Annual expected count = rate × (denominator / 100,000)
- Year-to-date = annual expected count × fraction of year elapsed
- Vaccine toggles act as a binary switch:
- ON = perfect prevention (assumes 100% coverage × 100% effectiveness → an upper bound on preventable burden)
- OFF = full baseline burden returns
Important interpretation notes:
- “Acute illnesses” and “Chronic outcomes/cancers” are treated as separate incident outcome streams, not mutually exclusive.
- Some outcomes (e.g., cancers) have long latency and are not truly tied to infections occurring this same year—v0 is explicitly a simple “rate × population” counter. We’ll make this more realistic later with coverage, VE, and dynamic transmission / R₀.
Summary Table of Rates per 100,000.
| Disease | Acute illnesses | Chronic illness/cancer | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| Measles | 1100 | 0 | 0.500 |
| Pertussis | 150.0 | 0 | 6.75 |
| Poliomyelitis (paralytic) | 0 | 1.41 | 0.155 |
| Rubella (reported) | 28.46 | 0 | 0 |
| Congenital Rubella Syndrome (10-yr smoothed) | 0 | 0.987 | 0.104 |
| Diphtheria | 145 | 0 | 10.9 |
| Tetanus | 0.40 | 0 | 0.04 |
| Haemophilus influenzae type b (invasive) | 8.63 | 0 | 0.432 |
| Pneumococcal disease (IPD only) | 24.3 | 0 | 2.50 |
| Meningococcal disease | 1.20 | 0.21 | 0.15 |
| Hepatitis A | 12.0 | 0 | |
| Hepatitis B (acute) | 9.6 | 0 | 0 |
| Hepatitis B chronic liver disease/HCC (mortality stream) | 0 | 1.1 | 1.73 |
| HPV-associated cancers (all sites; incidence) | 0 | 11.7 | 1.20 |
Sources used (and how the placeholders were derived)
Anchor sources (CDC “Pink Book” + CDC surveillance pages)
The primary reference for these estimates is the CDC’s Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (“Pink Book”).
Where I pulled explicit baseline statements/ranges:
- Measles: Pink Book states ~500,000 reported cases and ~500 deaths annually pre-vaccine, with true cases estimated 3–4 million.
- Pertussis: Pink Book gives an average of ~175,000 cases/year pre-vaccine.
- Diphtheria: Pink Book gives 100,000–200,000 cases and 13,000–15,000 deaths annually in the 1920s (pre-vaccine).
- Tetanus: Pink Book gives 500–600 cases annually before vaccine.
- Polio: Pink Book notes >21,000 paralytic cases in 1952 peak (used as a sanity-check anchor for paralytic burden scale).
- Hepatitis B (acute): Pink Book explicitly cites ~9.6 per 100,000 acute infections “before vaccine.”
Varicella (chickenpox) baseline
Two CDC sources align well on pre-vaccine burden:
- CDC Surveillance Manual chapter on varicella: ~4 million cases/year, 10,500–13,500 hospitalizations, 100–150 deaths/year in early 1990s.
- CDC chickenpox vaccination impact page repeats the same pre-vaccine burden summary.
How we turned that into a rate (conceptually): take “cases/year” (or deaths/year) and divide by population, then express per 100,000.
Shingles (herpes zoster) as a “chronic” stream
CDC summarizes:
- Incidence is roughly 2 to 9 cases per 1,000 population annually (≈200–900 per 100,000/year).
- Fewer than 100 deaths/year from shingles in the U.S.
RSV (infants) denominator and burden
The model treats RSV infant burden using an infant denominator (~births/year proxy) rather than total population.
For medically attended infant RSV-LRTI, one recent peer-reviewed estimate projects ~592,700 medically attended RSV-LRTI cases annually among U.S. infants <12 months (useful for deriving an annual rate per infant population).
CDC also publishes ongoing RSV burden estimate pages (hospitalization-focused and season-specific), which are helpful for triangulation and messaging, but not always “one-number-per-year” incidence.
Births used as the infant denominator proxy
For the U.S. births/year constant used in the tool:
- CDC/NCHS reports 3,596,017 births in 2023.