Vaccines are here . At first, and with their inventor Pasteur, vaccines were suspect. Then they were accepted. By 1855, the first required vaccines for school children were instituted in Massachusetts . They had a good run, with public trust almost complete. Then came the first problem with a vaccine that couldn’t track a tricky disease, influenza. Then came a correlation of a vaccine with a worse condition, autism. Now vaccines again are suspect once again. Case A . We see a decline in flu cases as the use of flu vaccines increase. Too complicated for many is this simple relation. T hey see only the first part, the “decline in flu cases, ” and so getting the flu vaccine is unnecessary and always inconvenient. So, they don’t. So, more flu cases occur. This initiates a cycle via this simple rule: Fewer flu cases this year implies fewer flu shots next year implies more flu cases. Surprised? Case B . In another situation, recall the 1998 (false) report that the MMR (M
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