Letters to the Editor
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Staying on the Issue
Forgive me Desigirl for insinuating myself, but to stay on the issue we have to agree what the issue is.
1. You have a hard time with "tirades" against Parikh. Well a few people here may have a hard time with Parikh's fact free and misleading presentation. Is that not relevant?
2. The graphs from Atomicswerve are from Europe and the US, firstly because the argument was that improvement in hygiene, living standards (and to a lesser extent antibiotics) has accomplished far more than vaccines. Your anwer is that you wish to consider only smallpox; and you wish to consider it worldwide. Two problems: The statistics for places like India or sub-Saharan Africa are not very reliable, nor very transparent even today. You may have noticed for instance that HIV prevalence estimates were more than halved for India in 2007. Further, when the argument is that higher living standards, better nutrition, less crowding, less war etc. has reduced mortaliy with up to 90%, you cannot go to corners of the world where no comparable improvement has taken place to refute that argument.
In short, you are left with a single point, that vaccines, for lack of better options, sometimes appear to work. However, the article was about vaccination in the US where other options ARE available.