Vaccinations are some of the most valuable contributions to modern medicine. They have drastically reduced the prevalence of certain diseases, including polio, tetanus, measles and chicken pox. One disease, smallpox, has even been eradicated completely, with no natural cases since 1977. Most recently, we’ve developed a vaccine for COVID-19, which has drastically cut down cases and deaths, and allowed the country to reopen. Unfortunately, there is still a significant chunk of the population that is hesitant to get the vaccine, as only around 68% of Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of September 2022.
The first step to getting more Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and other diseases is to educate people on the importance of vaccines and how much good they have done for public health. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that vaccines prevent around 4 to 5 million deaths per year. Vaccines are also very safe, and according to the WHO, “so few deaths can plausibly be attributed to vaccines that it is hard to assess the risk statistically.”
Some states are better than others when it comes to vaccinating. In order to see where people are most responsible about getting vaccines, WalletHub examined the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 17 key metrics. Our data set ranges from share of vaccinated children to share of people without health insurance to presence of reported measles outbreaks.
