According to the World Health Organization, vaccines prevent 3.5 million to 5 million deaths worldwide each year. In the U.S., however, routine vaccination rates among children are dropping, while vaccine exemptions have reached record highs.

U.S. measles cases, mostly involving children, have surged to a 35-year high in 2026.

The personal finance company WalletHub surveyed vaccination rates among states in 2026. The five states with the highest rates:

1. Vermont

2. Massachusetts

3. New Hampshire

4. Rhode Island

5. Maine

The five states with the lowest:

50. Mississippi

49. Oklahoma

48. Alabama

47. Alaska

46. Wyoming

The District of Columbia has the highest influenza vaccination coverage for children, 2.2 times higher than Mississippi, the state with the lowest.

Vermont has the highest share of adults with tetanus vaccination, 1.6 times higher than in Mississippi, the state with the lowest.

Vermont has the highest share of adults aged 60 and older with the zoster (shingles) vaccination, 1.9 times higher than in Mississippi, the state with the lowest.

Minnesota has the highest share of children 19 to 35 months old living in poverty with the combined seven-vaccine series, which is 1.7 times higher than in California, the state with the lowest.

Body of Knowledge

One in every 2,000 babies is born with a tooth.

Mark Your Calendar

October is awareness month for ADHD, breast cancer, dental hygiene, Down syndrome, spina bifida, sudden cardiac arrest and eye injuries, though that last category you never see coming.

Doc Talk

Chalazion: A slowly developing lump that forms due to blockage and swelling of an oil gland in the eyelid. Unlike styes, chalazions are generally not due to infections and are typically painless.

Phobia of the Week

Peladophobia: Fear of bald people. Fortunately, it's superficial.

Never Say 'Diet'

The Major League Eating speed-eating record for pickled jalapeno peppers is 275 in eight minutes, held by Patrick Bertoletti, who couldn't have pecked a better pickled pepper.

Health Hacks

Drink a glass of water before your morning coffee or tea to speed rehydration. You typically lose one to three pounds of water weight overnight through respiration, sweating and urination.

Best Medicine

First patient: "I just found out I'm colorblind."

Second patient: "Wow!"

First patient: "Yeah, I know. The diagnosis came completely out of the purple."

Observation

"When you start eating food without labels, you no longer need to count the calories." — Health and wellness advocate and personal trainer Amanda Kraft

Medical History

This week in 1997, American biology professor Stanley B. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering "prions," described as "an entirely new genre of disease-causing agents." The name means "proteinaceous infectious particle."

Prions cause brain diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow disease," scrapie in sheep and goats, and the human variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Prions are too small to be seen with normal microscopy. They replicate by inducing misfolding of normal proteins and contain no nucleic acid. They are highly resistant to destruction or denaturation by common chemical and physical agents, such as disinfectants, formalin, heat, UV or ionizing radiation. Incineration of infected tissues requires a temperature of 1,832 F to 2,012 F.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that's hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore.

In 2026, the Ig Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded posthumously to Tokuji Unno for his published study "How to blow the nose — an aerodynamic study of nose blowing." Unno used a variety of devices to measure velocity, volume and time scale of blowing through each side of the nose over 60 trials.

He came to this conclusion: The faster the "expiratory thrust" of the blow, the more efficiently one can expel any mucus, and pressure changes in the ear canal were not high enough in his experiments to carry a high risk of ear infection. Thus, "a big and long nose blow is therefore recommended to prevent upper and lower respiratory tract diseases."

Now you nose better.

Med School

You've got a prescription from your doctor. It's illegible, in part because some of it may involve Latin-based abbreviations. Can you translate these?

1. Bid

2. Hs

3. Prn

4. Gt

Answers: 1. Bid, or bis in die, means "twice a day." 2. Hs is short for hora somni, or "at bedtime." 3. Prn, or pro re nata, means "as needed." 4. Gt stands for gutta, meaning "drop."

Epitaphs

"Before you jump in here with me,

make sure you bring good memories.

For here they're all we have to trade,

and where you are is where they're made." — Gravestone of Harold J. Story (1919-1993)

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Mufid Majnun at Unsplash