Yeah......most diseases were already on the way out the door before vaccines came into play. Nice try.
http://drsuzanne.net/dr-suzanne-humphries-vaccines-vaccination/
That chart is not about the prevalence of the diseases, it is about mortality rate (note the huge drop after diphtheria antitoxin became available).
I am perfectly on-board with the fact that better education, sanitary conditions, and quarantine substantially reduced the spread of these diseases.
I am also on-board with the fact that our healthcare system is such that fewer people die after they contract these illnesses than used to.
I am NOT on-board with saying "oh, well if most people won't die from it, let's not worry about exposing people (including at-risk populations such as the immunocompromised and the elderly...who are overrepresented at hospitals)"
Will I die if I contract HPV? Hell, I likely won't even notice. But hey, my cervical cancer, hysterectomy, and inability to ever bear children won't increase the numbers on that chart, so who cares.
Will 50 kids die if they all get measles? Almost certainly not. However, 2 of them have leukemia and now they're at risk of serious complication...and they wouldn't have gotten it if the other 48 had been vaccinated. They might die. They might just have their treatment screwed up. ALL 50 of the kids will be miserable when they absolutely didn't have to be.
And hey, I already had chickenpox, so clearly that's not a huge issue. But when I'm 75 and I have painful shingles rash, boy I'll be wishing that childhood me had gotten the vaccine instead of the illness.
I don't understand how people can be so concerned about every single bump and bruise their child
might get (god forbid they play with sticks that might have
splinters, or run on the side of the pool), but then turn around and think 'oh, well, what's 1wk of absolute fever and misery...my kid has a good immune system, they will be OK' and not even consider how unpleasant the whole scenario is even without serious complication.
As one of the articles in that 'Voices for Vaccination' site posted above said, if you trust your kid's immune system to deal with the live virus, why would you not trust it to deal with the attenuated version?