To the editor,

Since health policy is now based on junk science, I’ll take my turn.

I survived childhood because I was vaccinated against infectious diseases that killed thousands of kids before my 1963 birth. That’s not to say I would have likely died of a transmissible disease, but vaccination against them made my chances practically zero.

I asked my mother why she had me vaccinated and she looked at me like I was nuts. It was an asinine question because my parents loved me and loving, responsible parents protect their children from threats seen and unseen. I received vaccines for influenza, polio, diphtheria, measles, mumps, rubella—the whole schmear—and didn’t get any of those diseases and none of the vaccines killed me. Thanks, Ma.

The fact that I didn’t end up among the children in our rural Wisconsin church cemetery caused me to wonder how many kids age ten and younger are buried there and when they died. I studied records from 1867 to present and found:

-74 children account for 13% of all 585 burials.

-63, or 85%, of the children died before 1950.

-An average of seven children died per decade from the 1860s through 1940s.

-1.4 children per decade died from the 1950s to present.

-The last child was buried in 1991.

Is it coincidence that child mortality rates in our cemetery declined after vaccines became widespread in the 1950s and 60s? Probably not. The CDC reports the U.S. 0-9 year-old mortality rate spiked from 1,185 deaths/100,000 children in 1915 to 2,021 deaths in 1918 (Spanish Flu), and then fell to 198 deaths in 1950, five years after children started receiving the influenza vaccine. Today, the World Health Organization estimates 3.5-5 million deaths per year worldwide are prevented by vaccinations against diseases including diphtheria, tetanus, influenza and measles. Researchers know this because they compare current vaccination rates and deaths from associated diseases to deaths reported before vaccines were available. Facts and math.

So here we are with some public health officials making wild claims without evidence that vaccines are ineffective and even dangerous. Worse, anti-vaxxers are positioned to make policies that discourage or even restrict vaccines proven to be safe, effective and affordable. Worse still, parents are buying into it, fewer kids are getting vaccinated, and outbreaks are popping up across the nation. The CDC reports 1,544 measles cases so far this year—the highest number since 1992— and almost all occurred in unvaccinated persons.

Maybe my rural cemetery analysis isn’t so junky after all. Unlike the gibberish I’m hearing these days, my study is at least based on facts and math.

Jim Langdon

DeForest