I feel like typical reporting of research could be improved this way.
"Forget trying to understand this issue, let us explain how you should feel about it!"
It will immediately be abused. Still, probably better than the current situation.
Well... yeah. Because you stand no chance of understanding the issue, and there is a very high risk that you will develop irrational feelings that will lead you to do dangerous things.
Take for example the flu effectiveness in elders study. The biased journalists summarized it as "flu vaccine is killing elders". It would have been harder to misrepresent it to such a degree if the abstract contained something like this:
"Public health notice: the authors believe existing vaccines are safe and effective and strongly recommend people of all ages to undergo vaccination. This study is a scientific inquiry with the purpose of increasing that effectiveness for elder patients, and our current findings have no imediate clinical application. More specifically, we report no evidence that flu vaccination is a net health risk for the elderly."
A friend of mine wrote a paper and his university's PR department called him up to propose writing a press release, because it looked like it might be of popular interest. And my friend's first thought was to downplay the actual impact of the research, as it was a preliminary study.
It got me thinking that maybe every paper should include a similar thing.
I’ve also wondered about this with global warming. Obviously it’s true, but what if you found something as a scientist that said the heat increase will be 5% less than expected. Would they let you publish it?
In the end, distrusting science causes it to become distrustful. Ironic.
Citation needed[0].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...
I can understand why the system was set up, and it is the way it is, but alas.
Peter Higgs (of Higgs-Boson particle) talks about this here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...
For example, there was a time when doctors deemed it prudent not give babies breast milk, to take the baby away from the mother for observation after being born, prescribe DES to try to prevent miscarriage.
I imagine vaccination is not one of these cases, but there's a lot we don't really understand at all about the immune system (e.g. why autoimmune conditions like allergies are growing so fast), or the human body in general.
This, exactly this, is how the anti-vax movement exists! It is amazing how lay people will just dismiss the research and conclusions of an entire field of science with a handwave and an argument-less quip.
Maybe you'd be more upset if you had a child that got sick in an area where vaccination rates were low. Or if you had a child that had actual, real, medical reasons why they couldn't receive the immunization and need to rely on herd immunity for their literal survival.
What I'm pointing out is that the side that says it knows, historically, has been wrong a lot more than we recognize.
>> Maybe you'd be more upset if you had a child that got sick in an area where vaccination rates were low. Or if you had a child that had actual, real, medical reasons why they couldn't receive the immunization and need to rely on herd immunity for their literal survival.
Of course I'd be upset in those circumstances, I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that we all need to get angry on the internet to save little kids? Because I'll tell you right now that's the least effective way to try to bring anybody to your side.
You’re cherry picking specific scenarios where a recommendation was given that was later proven incorrect.
There is no evidence to suggest vaccines are going to be one of those scenarios. What we do know is that not vaccinating will lead to unnecessary deaths and serious illnesses.
Source?
Should we not use the scientific method to measure what percentage of the time medical diagnoses are wrong, medicines are withdrawn after being prescribed, and health outcomes of those born at home versus born at the hospital?
Many/most of the pediatricians/nurses who parents interact with have no idea about the details of the vaccines. They are just blindly following protocol because they are told to. They have a million other things to do and concern themselves about.
Even though I think vaccines are safe and hugely beneficial I find the ideas that the safety of vaccines are "beyond debatable" to be the most rediculous of the arguments on both sides.
We should debate and question everything. There have been other medicines that had been considered safe and then were found to have long term side effects. And of course countless others that were considered safe and never produced side effects.
Just because it's considered safe now doesn't mean we fully understand every aspect of the human body and chemistry and diseases well enough to say that vaccines will never be harmful.
The absolutist language actually makes people more skeptical. If we stick to un-arguable truths like: " In X studies, only 0.01% of people had side effects and each of them had pre existing conditions" sounds way better than "It's undebatably safe and you're an idiot/danger to society if you think otherwise".
People will make good choices if you respect them and stick to the facts.
People aren't reading books with bad info, they're reading Facebook posts and random blogs.
Keeping people ignorant and forcing them via government regulation is a very scary path to go down IMO.
Big Pharma doesn't exactly have a track record of always using good judgment, but it does have a track record of using bad science and plain illegal activities like failing to report adverse reactions on plenty of things it sells.
Ultimately vaccines are a huge money-making machine for Big Pharma, and while the basic science of vaccines is sound and works, that's not the part that most anti-vaxxers are complaining about, but the fact that it's an ever increasing schedule of more and more vaccines, larger doses more bundled together with adjuvants that are at best "not gonna harm you" to at worst "may cause life-long issues".
When you're a parent and you're literally making choices that could affect the life of a child one way or the other for life (or worse cause his death), you take pause and weigh the pros and cons.
So instead of painting anti vaxxers as this "lunatic crowd of backwater parents who don't believe in science", let's stop to take a hard look at the very real forces in play and the Big Pharma interests that would love nothing more than to silence a movement that is eating at its bottom line.
The basic science on vaccines is sound. That's not what anti-vaxxers (the ones that actually did some research) are complaining about.
This is a key driver. And if you look further back, you find that there were some real vaccine safety issues, some decades ago. Enough that the pharmaceutical industry pushed through a law providing immunity for civil damages from side effects.[0] And setting up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program,[1] which basically amounts to forced arbitration.
So yes, the anti-vaccine activists may come off as paranoid. But there are arguably some valid reasons for that attitude.
"Vaccine overload", a non-medical term, is the notion that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child's immature immune system and lead to adverse effects.[134] Despite scientific evidence that strongly contradicts this idea,[113] some parents of autistic children believe that vaccine overload causes autism.[135] The resulting controversy has caused many parents to delay or avoid immunizing their children.[134] Such parental misperceptions are major obstacles towards immunization of children.[136]
The concept of vaccine overload is flawed on several levels.[113] Despite the increase in the number of vaccines over recent decades, improvements in vaccine design have reduced the immunologic load from vaccines; the total number of immunological components in the 14 vaccines administered to US children in 2009 is less than 10% of what it was in the 7 vaccines given in 1980.[113] A study published in 2013 found no correlation between autism and the antigen number in the vaccines the children were administered up to the age of two. Of the 1,008 children in the study, one quarter of those diagnosed with autism were born between 1994 and 1999, when the routine vaccine schedule could contain more than 3,000 antigens (in a single shot of DTP vaccine). The vaccine schedule in 2012 contains several more vaccines, but the number of antigens the child is exposed to by the age of two is 315.[137][138] Vaccines pose a very small immunologic load compared to the pathogens naturally encountered by a child in a typical year;[113] common childhood conditions such as fevers and middle-ear infections pose a much greater challenge to the immune system than vaccines,[139] and studies have shown that vaccinations, even multiple concurrent vaccinations, do not weaken the immune system[113] or compromise overall immunity.[140] The lack of evidence supporting the vaccine overload hypothesis, combined with these findings directly contradicting it, has led to the conclusion that currently recommended vaccine programs do not "overload" or weaken the immune system.[103][141][142]
Any experiment based on withholding vaccines from children has been considered unethical,[143] and observational studies would likely be confounded by differences in the health care-seeking behaviours of under-vaccinated children. Thus, no study directly comparing rates of autism in vaccinated and unvaccinated children has been done. However, the concept of vaccine overload is biologically implausible, vaccinated and unvaccinated children have the same immune response to non-vaccine-related infections, and autism is not an immune-mediated disease, so claims that vaccines could cause it by overloading the immune system go against current knowledge of the pathogenesis of autism. As such, the idea that vaccines cause autism has been effectively dismissed by the weight of current evidence.[113]
"It's OK for the rich to park on double yellow lines, litter in the streets, etc.."
I think people feel genuinely scared about contracting serious illnesses so it's hitting a lot of buttons and the two sides don't seem to be able to hear or respect each other.
Note the name calling and judgement in many of the threads.
As the GP explained, there are a lot fewer anti-vaxxers when it requires them to voluntarily take a financial hit.
> the two sides don't seem to be able to hear or respect each other.
You’re not going to find a lot of support or respect for anti-science positions on a strongly pro-science message board.
And yeah, you can influence any behavior with financial insensitive.
If someone says they're scared to vaccinate their kid, only respect and listening can possibly help you achieve your goal.
I actually think vaccines are a good thing but get down voted for even saying we should respect anti-vaxxers as people.
As I get older I've realized that resistance is usually valid even if I don't agree with it. People rarely make decisions against their own interest. The trick is to align their interests with yours and calling them names will just drive then farther from you.
It seems like many people here just want to spout anger at anti-vaxxers rather than make any progress as a community.
Typically people call a policy discriminatory when some person or group is being harmed, but most people here agree that vaccinating children is helping to prevent harm from occurring, so it does not appear to be discriminatory. The fact that this policy does not apply to wealthy people is a red herring, since it doesn't impact whether or not poor people are being harmed.
Yes. It is called positive discrimination, because the object of discrimination is advantaged by it.
> so it does not appear to be discriminatory.
You want to choose the vaccination schedule yourself, now you have to pay a fine (or not receive a benefit: close to the same thing). It is said to prevent harm from occuring, but apparently the person who's making the decision here believes the Finnish schedule (which is 1/2-1/3 of the US schedule in size) is better for them.
No choice for the poor, all the choice to the rich. Discriminatory policy if you ask me.
How impractical is it to make fines income/wealth-variable?
Btw, higher income people are also impacted by policies like kindergarten access http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/no-childcare-o...
In Australia anti-vaccination is a middle class phenomenon, the poor (in the main) are not against vaccination and just need an effective reminder to vaccinate.
Do you just shrug it off or ignore it? Or do you do some research (and what do you find?)?
One of the biggest red flags I see is all the lawsuits against vaccine makers in the 1980's. Out of fear of running out of money, pharma companies lobbied the government into making the vaccine court. Now a vaccine maker has no liability, any issues from a vaccine has to go through the vaccine court and settlements are paid out with tax payer money, the marker does not have to be involved. How is that not an issue or red flag?
If Ford lobbied the government for protection against lawsuits from accidental deaths due to faulty parts in a car would you still buy a car from Ford? And what if you put your kids in that car? How would that not be child endangerment? But yet this is how we treat vaccine makers.
Or what about the fact that "wild" polio in India has been reduced to only a few cases per year while "vaccine derived paralytic" polio is over 50k+ cases per year? Its arguable that wild polio was much more safer.
Or the fact that diphtheria and pertussis are a bacterial disease (not viral) and the vaccine simply makes one immune to the toxins that the bacteria produce, thus enabling one to carry the disease symptom free and spread it to others unaware?
Or, going back to money, for every new vaccine regiment that is prescribed a company then profits over a billion dollars every year thereafter?
Or how about the fact that a vaccine does not work by injecting a "dead virus" into your body. A dead virus offers no threat to your body and thus your immune system will not fight against it. To make a vaccine produce antibodies (debatable what role antibodies provide to immunity), you then have to introduce other ingredients along with it to cause the body to go into a state of response. And to continually inject these ingredients into your body to perpetually heighten your immune response, would it not be logical to see that as bad and causing an increase in allergies and other autoimmune diseases? None of this seems to be studied.
Or how about the fact that infant immunity was once established through breast feeding (which few do now out of "convenience") yet vaccine derived immunity is not spread through breast milks (thus leading to our current heightened infant infection rates)?
Trying to find actual scientific studies is also rather difficult. There is apparently no funding outside of what the vaccine makers provide for their own results/benefit. The only time a vaccine ever provides negative info on a vaccine is when they are marketing a "new and improved" version. I find that somewhat laughable.
These to me seem like red flags. And as long as there are apparent side effects, I don't see what right a government would have to force one to do something that is possibly dangerous (and against their will at that). You certainly can't say it is "for the greater good" as it has already been shown that vaccines shed and infect others (read: the vulnerable). This is usually stated right on the vaccine insert. I'm sure they'll remove that from the public view as well someday...
edit: I ask if you down vote me, please explain why.
edit: Also, note I have not stated whether I am pro or anti vaccine, so don't judge me based on that. But if you visit any anti-vaccine resources, the above is almost verbatim what you will see. And I am certainly curious what the argument against this is. Something other than "you're an idiot" as most anti-vax arguments point to "research" of some sort that certainly shows something other than 100% safety.
The worst one is the silliness about high infant infections rates.
My grandma had polio and it impacted her from the time of infection to the time she died. I wonder if you've ever met anyone that had polio.
I'm glad that you have posed several topics that I hope will spark discussion and have people critically think about the issue rather than blindly accept what the 'establishment' dictates.
I mean, a lot of vaccines are made in China and other places that have lackluster health and safety standards. Just this past week, China has been in an uproar over tainted vaccines. There is legitimate cause to be wary of whats included within certain vaccine formulations, despite the science underlying vaccination being sound.
Are you one in of those teams? No? Then maybe don’t do your own “research” and maybe get your advice from a qualified person. Maybe someone you can see whenever you need to, perhaps someone who might have spent 8 years studying medicine in university? Maybe a doctor could help?
I dunno though maybe Facebook and news reports about Chinese vaccines are a more reliable, reputable source of information.
The West has had plenty of its own tainted vaccine issues but it’s not in any shape or form an excuse to not vaccinate just an excuse to have better standards which we already have.
Even with all the possible problems, side effects and complications vaccination saves millions of people each year.
Vaccination isn’t just about you if you don’t vaccinate your child you not only put them at risk but more importantly you those who cannot be vaccinated at even more risk as they would have a compromised immune system to begin with.
The sad truth is that not-vaccinating your child would likely won’t kill them due to modern medicine, however it can kill those who cannot be vaccinated which is why the moral imperative is for society to mandate vaccination because if we have one rule for a just society regardless of what system we use is that the strong should protect the weak.
Who has more rights ?
Strong or weak I don't think it is in anyone's interest to have a large percentage of the population die due to rampant disease.
So I will go with "forced" medicine, and fluorine in my tap water.
Unfortunately comments like this convey misinformation and could help to spread anti-vax positions.
There's very little research to suggest that ingestion of fluoride has any positive health impact. Comparing the two issues is quite misleading.
Because in america we believe in an individual's personal right and a limited government. A government free to take your children away when there is no immediate danger would certainly violate this.
If people understood herd immunity, understood that the underpinnings of the anti-vax movement are based on debunked fraudulent science, etc, this "anti-vax" situation would've never come into being.
I would rather require vaccinations for all children and remove a parent to have any say in the matter. I would also rather have everyone be opted in to become an organ donor upon death with no opt out possible. Sadly, I don’t rule the world.
1. No medicine is 100% safe in all circumstances. Vaccines do have published risk of complications and while tiny are not zero and sometimes are greater than the risk of contracting the disease itself.
2. As a general rule, I don't want any government telling me what to put in my body or my kid's bodies. Why not ban sugar that leads to far more health conditions than some of these diseases? Why not force people to eat the government recommended ratio of fiber, fat, calories, etc.? Sure, people might be physically healthier but at the expense of freedom of choice.
3. The flu and common cold kills lots of people per year yet those vaccines are optional for adults while some are required for kids, why?
4. Vaccines are required for kids to come to public school in CA, but not required to go to placed where they're in even closer contact (sports, pools, etc.), why?
While I think free vaccines, good education and honest dialogue are important, punishing dissent doesn't seem right. I think understanding that non-vaxers have legitimate concerns helps create a better solution than enforcement and blame.
Yes. But the risk of a pandemic is the risk you are to compare with. Not the 1% risk of a side effect compared to a 0.01% risk of contracting the disease. Also: herd immunity means that those who can't take the vaccine are protected. Anyone who doesn't take e.g. the smallpox shot, is getting a free ride on those of us who DO take the shot. The reason they could dodge any side effect and STILL run almost 0% risk of getting smallpox, is because everyone else took the shot. I think this is what is lost on antivaxers. They think that the vaccine protects THEM and that they can thus weigh that benefit against the risk on THEM. But that's not how it works. Their shot protects ME.
> As a general rule, I don't want any government telling me what to put in my body or my kid's bodies.
As a general rule, I want my government to ensure the society is vaccinated. Government already tells you a lot of what you can and can't put in your body. Having them say you HAVE to put something is going one step further, but I don't see how it's a very big one.
> Vaccines are required for kids to come to public school in CA, but not required to go to placed where they're in even closer contact (sports, pools, etc.), why?
Presumably because of how laws work and how it might be legal for a school to require vaccines, but not another public location (perhaps because the school isn't a public place at all?).
> punishing dissent doesn't seem right.
Excellent point. Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.
> I think understanding that non-vaxers have legitimate concerns helps create a better solution than enforcement and blame.
I think it's important to meet their concerns with information. But we can never ever give parents the idea that vaccines are somehow a controversial idea. It's not.
Just to be clear, herd immunity protects those who aren't vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, your community's vaccination or lack there of doesn't affect you.
> Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.
Yes, despite all the down votes my comment isn't about who is right or wrong, it's about respecting the other side. Just because you want your government to make laws about having to put medicine in your body there are millions of libretarians that would disagree on principle no matter how glaring the health benefits. It's less about taking the vaccine and more about the judgement and punishment if they don't that actually makes them resist more, not less.
You can't get rid of guns by deamonizing those that own guns and you can't increase herd immunity by deamonizing anti-vaxxers.
So I really like your idea. Offer carrots and respect, not sticks and judgement.
For example, many countries began vaccinating young female children against HPV on the rationale that understanding of cervical cancer says if we prevent HPV infection we prevent almost all of this type of primary cancer, and the vaccine seems to prevent infection with some strains of HPV implicated in cancer.
Now, you can immediately see that vaccinating their male colleagues could induce herd immunity, this is almost always an STI. But ethically that doesn't justify classes of boys.
What did subsequently cause some countries to vaccinate boys was the fact that HPV also causes cancer in other places, and vaccinating the boys protects them against that. It's a narrower call (fewer cancer cases prevented) but for a relatively safe vaccine it can still make sense.
Edited to add: This gets interesting for a "Chickenpox Vaccine". The virus that causes Chickenpox in children (Varicella-zoster) has much nastier consequences in adults. So if we vaccinate children so they don't a nasty but rarely deadly illness, but as a result more adults get infected without prior exposure, that might suck... Different countries have made different choices about what to do here.
Yes, so the selfish will avoid the risk and free-ride on the herd immunity. In a society that is irrationally selfish, the government may reasonably choose to give incentives to vaccinate. For example, the vaccinations might be required for admission into government-paid health care, or the government could compensate victims of the side-effects with care, cash, etc.
We'd be in less danger if no one did anything dangerous ever, but that doesn't leave much room for freedom.
It's extremely frustrating to see people doing something dangerous you disagree with, but it's likely that we all do it at some point.
When you run into stiff resistance like the anti-vaxx movement, which has little economic incentive (I can't think of who profits by a kid not taking vaccines), it helps to be able to understand where their points make sense even if you don't agree.
Once you're that beyond right and wrong, then you can educate more effectively. I've had much more constructive dialogues with anti-vaxx people once they know that I understand how scary it is for a government to tell you you have to inject your kid with something you don't understand and doesn't feel necessary and might have risks.
I think if you grant them the courtesy that they could be right (which science and medicine has examples of being highly confident and then being wrong), that then they are more open to at least getting the highest recommended vaccines on their own volition.
The actions of a few can seriously impact large populations. The multiplier effect is, potentially, significantly greater than with guns/alcohol/driving. (And even then, those arguably border on even more divisive debates that we should leave for another thread.)
I think where the point gets contentious with libertarians is that forcing them to do something feels far scarier and authoritarian to them than forcing them not to do something.
I agree that we're all connected though and the decisions we make impact those around us no matter how individual we think our actions might be.
This is a circular argument. In G7 countries with highly developed economies and medical systems, the reason why the risk of contracting a disease like mumps, rubella or polio is extremely rare is because almost everyone is vaccinated against them.
Now, most people should be vaccinated and those few that aren't should hopefully be protected by herd immunity.
To say that the quality medical systems and herd immunity decreasing the risk of those diseases nullifies the dangers of adverse reactions is a bit unfair.
To close, I agree that most everyone should be vaccinated and that philosophical beliefs are not valid reasons to avoid vaccination. I do disagree in that I believe that there are a number of rare situations where vaccination is legitimately more harmful than just relying on herd immunity.
The scientific evidence supporting vaccinations is undebatable, the fact that parents can opt their kids out because they disagree with reality and put other people's lives at risk should be as abhorrent in the public mind as drunk driving.
After all, maybe there's someone who disagrees with the science of how alcohol consumption impairs driving, and how this, statistically, will kill innocent people. Shouldn't they get to disagree with reality and put innocents in harm's way?
But with vaccines the harm is too far removed and only visible through statistics, you usually can't point to any one unvaccinated child and say they caused so-and-so to die (unlike in the case of drunk driving). But the image of a child being forcibly separated from its parents to be injected by agents of the state does produce a visceral image of harm.
There's this concept we call freedom.
Edit: If you're hating on me, stop and consider where you'd draw the line regarding individual risk vs social benefit. What about eugenics? For me, the drug war is going too far.
“Because freedom” isn’t an argument, isn’t a point being made, it’s nothing.
Indeed. And although this might sound extreme: should be considered child abuse too. You're making a massively uninformed choice that could kill or disable your child and others that aren't physically able to take the vaccine. Being an idiot shouldn't be any excuse for this behaviour.
Going around unvaccinated: you were able to be infected and transmit a disease, then you (or your parents) did not allow others to vaccinate you, now you are still able to get infected and transmit.
I'm not against vaccination, but I'm critical. (See my other comment) US has by far the biggest vaccination schedule in the world, and is not exactly an example of a great public health system. Scandinavian countries have much smaller schedules than the US, and they have healthier children.
These vaccines are not 100% safe nor 100% effective. The guidelines to vaccinate are designed for the well being of society, not one's child. Some parents will care about their child more than society overall or edge cases from people they do not know. Vaccine side effects are not recorded as often as they should be.
And yes, my children are fully vaccinated (CA requires them to be to attend school). We were able to do that (mostly) our way.
I found the following book incredibly helpful though you may feel like a pariah for reading it: https://www.amazon.com/Vaccine-Book-Decision-Parenting-Libra...
Yes, this is a comically simplistic view, and shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm just pointing out that the pseudo-Darwinian "let them die" rhetoric actually means "let us die".
1. Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Unvaccinated people are a threat to vaccinated people.
2. Vaccines aren't an option for 100% of people. People who choose not to vaccinated people are a threat to people who can't be safely vaccinated.
3. Information, including misinformation, spreads more quickly than death does. It won't die out due to natural selection.
4. Losing half our population to infectious disease, even if you consider them stupid and irresponsible, would have catastrophic effects for the economy.
5. A majority of the effected population are children.
6. Maybe, just maybe, letting millions of people just die of preventable disease, even if they're adults and made a foolish decision, isn't the right thing to do.
B) more seriously, antivax is a symptom; the real disease is memetic. At some point people gave up on fact-finding processes and the value of expertise. That is a disease vector where social media is the cholera-ridden communal water pump. Some of the things it spreads are harmless (moon landing denial) and some are even more dangerous than anti-vax, such as holocaust denial and sandy hook "paid actor" lies.
What's new is the internet.
Of course, irrationality is new! /s Uhm, what about religions?
There have always existed morons. The internet has just shown light on what was once restricted to rumor mills.
(Of course, that's assuming the survey and reporting are reliable ...)
edit:
Just going to point this out: this comment thread has multiple instances of people on the anti-vax slant showing that they either don't understand what herd immunity is, or don't understand that vaccinations are not 100% and are only effective on large populations due to herd immunity.
Again, I argue that education would make the anti-vax problem go away.
And then the result of that would be a ton of new anti-vaxxers, which would be bad for everyone.
Don't strawman that which you do not understand.
There is no indication that this lunacy is in any way shape and form is genetic.
Also the irony is that the vast majority of anti-vaxxers are vaccinated they will sadly survive their children might not but due to the sanitary conditions and herd immunity of western countries we will need a much larger portion of the population to be unvaccinated before we see major negative effects.
This is why we often see outbreaks in various spots that host large immigrant populations which are more likely to have lower percentage of vaccinated adults and even host asymptomatic carriers.
They will plague, they will survive.
They would be, if all anti-vaxxers were leftists, or if the anti-vax movement were politically and ideologically motivated by leftist politics the way that climate change denial is by the right, but no.
Sometimes equivocation works, but in this case it doesn't.
The right wing anti-vaxxers love to make analogy in between vaccine and guns, claiming it is their freedom to keep or resist and a unique denial of science and statistics, which I would say it mainly a right-wing hallmark.
http://vactruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/number-vaccin... (I did not read any info from this website, just foud the image by ggl image search)
The US has higher than expected childhood and especially infant mortality because it deliberately doesn't provide decent healthcare to a substantial fraction of its population. If anything the US has lower than desirable rates of vaccination, which is why it keeps having problems with outbreaks of preventable diseases.