evidence: In the 1960s, measles infected about 3-4 million people in the U.S. each year. More than 48,000 people were hospitalized, and about 4,000 developed acute encephalitis, a life-threatening condition in which brain tissues become inflamed. Up to 500 people died, mainly from complications such as pneumonia and encephalitis. This was why vaccine pioneers John Enders and Thomas Peebles were motivated to isolate, weaken and develop a vaccine against measles that is truly transformative for human health. Parents who knew the reality of the disease were quick to vaccinate their children. Uptake skyrocketed and the number of cases, and associated deaths, plummeted in the developed world. [...] Thanks to vaccination, however, between 2000 and 2016 there was an 84 percent decrease in measles mortality, and over 20 millions deaths were prevented due to vaccination. What an achievement! [...] What’s important to realize is those millions of kids who died of measles each year in the nineties, for the most part were not living in the developed world. In those days here in the United States and in Europe, there was a widespread appreciation that #vaccineswork, meaning that the vast majority of people received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and were well and truly protected. Two doses of the vaccine are 97 percent effective at stopping the infection.