Measles Data Visulization

When we think of Measles, we believe it is a disease of the past. Living in the 20th century we rarely see diseases like measles, smallpox, polio, hay fever, or mumps. These diseases are no longer in our vocabulary, they have almost fizzled away. The cross-contamination between humans and other animals isn’t unheard of. Like many diseases, measles also originated as zoonotic. Specifically from hooved animals such as cattle and bison. Thankfully measles is a minor illness, though highly contagious. Measles vaccination is typically a checklist item at an early age, a time most of us don’t remember, fortunately sparing us from the disease’s effects. In the graph below, we can see the annual cases of measles and how they have decreased over the years.

Bar Plot

The R Code used for this Bar Plot:

dat <- read.csv("~/Downloads/measles.csv")
barplot(height = dat$measles.cases/1000, names.arg = dat$year, xlab="Year", ylab="Measles Cases (x1000)", main="Annual Measles Cases Between 1980 and 2017", col=c(colors()[431], colors ()[456]))

Throughout 38 years, the annual cases of Measles have been tracked. The data collection has shown how the amount of cases has decreased. From 3,852,242 in 1980 (only 17% vaccination coverage) to 173,330 in 2017 (85% vaccination coverage). People present a high risk of catching the disease due to its contagious nature, but as we can see it too has fizzled out over time. It has decreased by about 22 times. Most people won’t die from measles, only suffer the symptoms. Therefore, tracking cases is still important and crucial to understanding diseases. Allowing our civilization to measure how we are fighting disease over time through this data collection.