NBC News and Stanford University have created a powerful interactive map that visualizes the percentage of students vaccinated for measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) at the county level. The map is a key component of their six-month investigation - Childhood vaccination rates are backsliding across the U.S..
What the Map Shows (and Doesn't Show)
The map's core purpose is to show the current state of vaccination rates, using a choropleth map where each county is shaded based on its MMR vaccination percentage. This is effective for identifying areas with low vaccination rates, which the accompanying article rightly highlights as a growing public health concern. The use of a simple, dark-to-light color scale makes the data easy to interpret at a glance.
However, the map doesn't visualize the change in vaccination rates over time. The investigative article emphasizes that America is "dangerously backsliding," but the map itself only provides a static snapshot of the latest data. It doesn't show where these steepest declines in vaccinations are occurring.
The Missing Piece Map View
After Trump appointed the barely-sentient Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services, there has been a growing tide of government sponsored anti-vaccine messaging - with the obvious concurrent rise in public health scares.
To visualize this fall in vaccination rates the map would need to also display the percentage point change over a specific period, perhaps the last five or ten years. Such a map would more visually connect the current public health crisis to the rise of anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation. It would directly show where the most significant impacts of these movements, often amplified by political figures and conspiracy theories, are being felt.
Also See
CDC Map of Measles Cases
CDC Map of Vaccination Rates for Kindergarteners (which curiously shows New Mexico as having a good rate of MMR vaccinations and not one of the worst rates - as shown on the NBC map)
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