The Value of a Vaccine

Having emerged from Covid, the World Health Organization (WHO) is overseeing negotiations that determine how we respond to future pandemics. While they had hoped to have an initial agreement this year, participants cannot agree on how to define pandemic. One diplomat told the Financial Times that the divide was especially between the “global north and the global south.” Among a slew of issues, they have to decide if being viral is a variable, how a disease spreads, and whether to distinguish global immunities. They also are debating who triggers the declaration of a pandemic. But, affecting our health and economic well-being, most crucially, vaccine development and dissemination are key topics.

Value of a Vaccine

Our vaccine story dates back to ancient techniques used in Asia to prevent smallpox. Not always effective, people were given dried scabs to breathe through their nose or skin puncture. The large leap came when, in 1796, the British physician Edward Tenner used a cowpox lesion to create immunity. Successful, the approach fueled vaccine research and the eradication of smallpox in 1980.

Below, we have a timeline for each disease that illustrates when the disease’s pathogen was identified. Each line ends when the U.S. licensed a vaccine targeting the pathogen:

We can cite numbers to illustrate the gargantuan impact of vaccines. I’ve copied a small section of a long list showing the number of cases and deaths that preceded a vaccine in the U.S.:

Our Bottom Line: Vaccine Economics

The most recent vaccine preventable outbreak in the news has been for measles. Globally, fewer children have gotten their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. During 2023, increasing from less than 1,000 to more than 40,000, cases of measles have multiplied across Europe. Although the outbreaks have mainly been in lower income nations, clusters have appeared everywhere. The U.K. reported 650 cases between October 1 and the end of February,

Beyond their health outcomes, vaccines have an economic impact. At the household level, everyone benefits from one vaccinated member. Nationally, a British scholar tells us that the cost of vaccine prevention is 4% of what an outbreak costs us. And, internationally, a Covid vaccine study of 46 countries’ emissions and Google mobility indices indicated that higher vaccine rates correlate to more economic activity. The study concluded that “vaccine deployment has persistent positive effects on the level of economic activity.”

And, for that reason, returning to the WHO negotiations, national perspectives vary.

My sources and more: As a topic, vaccines have wonderful investigative potential. Looking back, we can see their history through analysis from Our World in Data. Next, focusing on the present, we see the WHO attempt to define a pandemic, the Covid initiative, here and here and here, and the UK measles outbreak.