The benefit of HPV vaccination

In part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination have become a hot button issue. This is true even for non-COVID vaccines that have proven significant health benefits, such as those for human papillomavirus vaccines (HPV). Although betweeen 2016 and 2021 the share of teenagers receiving their HPV vaccination series increased from 60% to 77%, Bloomberg…

Uncertainty and Vaccination Decisions

An interesting result from Courbage and Peter (2021): …uncertainty about the probability of side effects and the efficacy of the vaccine always reduces take-up under ambiguity aversion. However, uncertainty about the underlying disease, being the probability of sickness or the probability of a severe course of disease, may either encourage or discourage vaccination. Because vaccination…

COVID-19 vaccination update

This weekend I received my second COVID-19 vaccine. While I certainly feel lucky to live in a country with ample vaccine supply, other countries are not so lucky. Let’s take a look at the numbers from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. These numbers are updated through May 2, 2021. First, you’ll see that…

Vaccines provide good value for money in low- and middle-income countries

That is according to a Health Affairspaper by So Yoon Sim et al. (2020). We estimated economic benefits using cost-of-illness and value-of-a-statistical-life approaches and combined this estimation with immunization program costs to derive the return on investment from immunization programs against ten pathogens for ninety-four low- and middle-income countries for the period 2011–30. Using the…

Polio eradicated in Africa?

Some positive news as reported in The Economist: On August 21st Nigeria marked three years since its last documented case of wild polio. That means the country is set to be declared polio-free by the World Health Organisation-backed Global Polio Eradication Initiative. If that happens, probably next year, all of Africa will be officially free…

Parents and Vaccinations

No, this story is not about parents who don’t vaccinate their kids.  It’s about parents who have vaccinated their kids (or plan to), but want to keep their children away from unvaccinated children.  From the LA Times: A Bay Area mother formed a Facebook page where parents could arrange play dates for their children with…

U.S. Measles Outbreak?

According to the CDC, this year is on track to be the worst for measles in more than a decade.  CNN reports that: There were 159 cases of measles in the United States from January 1 through August 24, according to the CDC. If that trend continues, there will be more cases in 2013 than…