You keep referring to death statistics... I suggest you check on rates of infection. Before pertussis vaccines became widely available in the 1940s, about 200,000 children got sick with it each year in the US and about 9,000 died as a result of the infection. Now we see about 10,000–40,000 cases reported each year and unfortunately about 10–20 deaths.
Well, bugger me.... I'm no chartist but it seems the number of cases is actually trending UP until the 1940s.... and then it starts trending up again in the 1990s. Now when did we get all suspicious about vaccinations???
As medical procedures and treatment of disease improved death rates would go down but the number of cases tells a different story.
"Deaths from whooping cough remained at around 10 000 a year from 1847 until the 1900s and then declined steeply as the health and care of children improved and had reached less than 400 a year by 1950. Immunisation started in the 1950s, deaths continued to fall and notifications fell sharply."
