It’s a busy day today as I submit a grant application, so here’s a quick quiz. Based on the following charts, can anyone guess the years in which vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella was introduced to the US? Click for larger versions, should you need it.
Pretty tricky, eh?
If you look at the trend for mumps and rubella you come up with 1971, which would be correct. But you cannot tell that from the measles trends, clearly. I have a reason for this but I await your sage interpretation.
The combined MMR vaccine wasn’t introduced until 1971, but measles vaccination was introduced in 1963, just at the point of the precipitous drop in measles cases.
(I don’t know how widely the measles vaccine was used in the 1963-1971 period — I’ve always assumed it was widely used, though.)