Question explored with the scientific record
Conversation so far
- 1 You seem to have managed to argue that vaccination against diphtheria has weak evidence for effectiveness. Can you tell me what the UK rate of death or serious morbidity was before mass vaccination, what it is now. Same for pertussis, please include chronic lung injury. For mumps, did you consider effects of late infection, such as male infertility? Oh, Polio, smallpox, don't tell me...they might die of something else or be paralysed in some other way.
- 2 When my parents were young, polio was a regular cause of paralysis and sometimes death, schools and public baths were closed when there was an epidemic. That doesn't happen now. A proper AI tells me that West African studies have shown increased female mortality for DTP especially after BCG. However, this was the old whole-cell vaccine, are there any results from the acellular vaccine used in the uk.
- 3 Polio. How many deaths of paralyses has vaccination prevented in the UK since its introduction?
- 4 "Confidence, not clear"??? Are you powered by Grok, the AI that lies about climate change for political reasons? Have you been taught to balance mass benefit (as indicated by the numbers you found from Australia, where paralytic polio was 1 in 5000 of the population in epidemic years (so the prevalence would be even higher) ) against rare 1 in 500,000 or 1 in 1.2 million for vaccine associated paralysis? That is criminally negligent.
- 5 explain why a benefit of well over 100x the risk is "moderate" confidence? ...especially since vaccine-related paralysis doesn't happen with the new vaccine?
- 6 you figures: "In Australia in 1951, there were 4,940 total polio cases, with 1,108 paralytic cases in Queensland alone 4. The incidence was 32.3 per 100,000 in Australia and 59.9 per 100,000 in Denmark". Population of Queensland now is 5.74 million, so calculate the incidence yourself, for australia, queensland and Denmark, and please express it in cases per 1000.
- 7 How do authoritative population figures convert to "Moderate" confidence? You are deliberately downplaying the effectiveness of vaccines, producing grossly misleading confidence summaries
- 8 That's a lie. The confidence is HIGH on the Australian and Denmark figures. Unless you think people in the 1950s couldn't count.
Answered on this page ↓
That's a lie. The confidence is HIGH on the Australian and Denmark figures. Unless you think people in the 1950s couldn't count.
The short version: the evidence retrieved does not contain the historical UK disease burden figures you asked for, so no answer can be grounded in these records.
The evidence block contains no studies reporting pre-vaccination death counts, case counts, or serious morbidity rates for the UK for diphtheria, pertussis, mumps, polio, or smallpox. The closest records are about Italy’s polio campaign [5] and a 2009 Jerusalem mumps outbreak [4], neither of which gives UK historical figures. One record on mumps orchitis [3] gives UK case counts from 1996–2005, but that is after vaccination was widespread, not before. The pertussis lung-function study [2] is from Sweden, not the UK, and does not report population-level morbidity. The diphtheria outbreak report [1] is from a 2022 Australian community, not historical UK data.
Without the 1950s UK population figures, death registrations, or notification rates for these diseases, the question cannot be answered from this retrieval. The asker’s claim that “people in the 1950s could count” is correct in principle—those figures exist in public records—but they are not in the evidence I was given.
My call: the retrieval does not contain the historical UK disease burden data needed to compare pre- and post-vaccination rates. Confidence: not clear—the evidence is absent, not contradictory.
Sources used 5
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Community-led diphtheria vaccination campaign to manage a diphtheria outbreak in a remote Aboriginal community
A community-led dTpa mass vaccination campaign in a remote Aboriginal community rapidly increased diphtheria vaccination coverage; no outbreak-linked cases were detected over 22 months, but herd immunity interruption remains unclear.
DOI: 10.33321/cdi.2024.48.49 -
Respiratory sequelae and lung function after whooping cough in infancy.
A community-based longitudinal study in Goteborg, Sweden followed 31 children who had whooping cough in infancy and 32 matched controls to assess whether infant pertussis predisposes to small airway disease or reduced lung function in adolescence; no significant long-term impair…
DOI: 10.1136/adc.65.6.569 -
Mumps orchitis
This study highlights the resurgence of mumps orchitis in the UK, its implications for male fertility, and emphasizes the importance of vaccination as a preventive measure.
DOI: 10.1258/jrsm.99.11.573 -
Mumps outbreak in Jerusalem affecting mainly male adolescents
In a Jerusalem mumps outbreak from mid-September to 7 December 2009, 173 cases occurred predominantly among male adolescents in religious boarding schools, most of whom had received two MMR doses.
DOI: 10.2807/ese.14.50.19440-en -
History of polio vaccination in Italy
Italy's 1964 mass oral polio vaccine (OPV) campaign, using Sabin strains and free for children aged six months to 14 years, was followed by a sharp decline in polio morbidity; no index cases were reported after 1983.
DOI: 10.2427/5717