What an Undervaccinated America Would Look Like
At first, much the same. But inevitably, dangerous diseases would resurge in a country that isn’t prepared for them.
By Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic
Becoming a public-health expert means learning how to envision humanity’s worst-case scenarios for infectious disease. For decades, though, no one in the U.S. has had to consider the full danger of some of history’s most devastating pathogens. Widespread vaccination has eliminated several diseases—among them, measles, polio, and rubella—from the country, and helped keep more than a dozen others under control. But in the past few years, as childhood-vaccination rates have dipped nationwide, some of infectious disease’s ugliest hypotheticals have started to seem once again plausible.