[acqq]

> The percentage of people that die from measles is extremely low

Only because most of the children are vaccinated!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles

"It causes the most vaccine-preventable deaths of any disease."

"In 1980, the disease was estimated to have caused 2.6 million deaths per year."

It would be an unbelievably cruel experiment, but if "anti-vaxxers" would win in the US and force it on everybody, in about, let's say, a decade there would been enough children deaths (it's 2 from every 1000 infected!) to prove them wrong.

As long as the most of children are vaccinated, it's the vaccinated ones who protect those of "anti."

[will_pseudonym]

I think he was referring to the mortality rate of people who are infected.

"The risk of death among those infected is usually 0.2%, but may be up to 10% in those who have malnutrition." (from your link)

[acqq]

Yes, only of 12 million children younger than 5 in the US, "only" 0.2%, that is, 2 of 1000 infected would make 25000 vaccine preventable children deaths in one epidemics, if nobody would have been vaccinated.

To answer to wmboy's question "how does it compare to malaria" -- malaria wasn't treatable with vaccines up to now, there are very recent successes to develop one which is still only 25%-50% effective (has a relatively low efficacy and it was only recently, 2015, approved for use outside trials). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria_vaccine I don't think you'd like mosquitoes biting you if you would travel, for example, to Africa, where malaria is common.

[wmboy]

Over the years improvements such as clean water, sanitation, medicine, access to healthcare etc have also improved.

The 2.6 million deaths per year were mostly from Africa right? Does that mean child mortality rates have improved that much?

I'm not saying that measles isn't a killer disease, but how does it compare to malaria for instance?