Measles cases used to be in the millions, nowadays, between 2021 and 2024 it’s under 100 cases. The advancements between then and now are the development of technology and medicine. The underdevelopment and scarcity of vaccines prohibited the common citizen’s access to vaccines. As time has gone on our resources and knowledge have increased. Allowing for the availability of vaccines to be abundant and required by all citizens. We can see a connection between an increase in vaccine coverage and a decrease in measles. Due to more vaccinations, we have been able to decrease the number of cases. Below is a scatter plot showing the percentage of vaccine coverage and measles cases between the years 1985-2005. The decreased slope shows a relationship with the vaccine percentage increase.
R Code used for this Interactive Scatter Plot:
library(plotly)## Loading required package: ggplot2##
## Attaching package: 'plotly'## The following object is masked from 'package:ggplot2':
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## last_plot## The following object is masked from 'package:stats':
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## filter## The following object is masked from 'package:graphics':
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## layoutdat <- read.csv("~/Downloads/measles.csv")
dat1 <- dat[dat$year >= 1985 & dat$year <= 2005, ]
p <- plot_ly(data = dat1, x = ~year, y = ~measles.cases, color = ~vaccination.coverage, mode = 'markers')%>%
layout(title = 'Annual Measles Cases and Vaccine Coverage Between 1985-2005')
p## No trace type specified:
## Based on info supplied, a 'scatter' trace seems appropriate.
## Read more about this trace type -> https://plotly.com/r/reference/#scatterUsed help from: https://bookdown.org/rwnahhas/IntroToR/selectobs.html
As we can see, as vaccination coverage increases, the cases of measles have decreased. The most vaccine coverage is present toward the right side of the graph. The more recent the years, the fewer cases are recorded. Why have these diseases significantly decreased over the last 30-40 years? A probable cause could be due to modern medicine. Enforcing vaccines has allowed us humans to no longer suffer from these illnesses. The disease’s highly contagious airborne nature has driven the annual cases to skyrocket when not treated with the proper medication. The effectiveness, abundance, and knowledge about vaccines have increased over the years. Potentially explaining why the annual cases of measles are 22 times less than they were in 1980. The vaccine coverage has increased in percentage by 5 times, clearly showing how vaccines affect measles cases.