In polite conversation, a muted cough can signify disagreement. It is tragically ironic, therefore, that whooping cough, or pertussis, is fast becoming the poster child disease for preventable infections.

Despite the U.S. government recommending a vaccine series that prevents the disease, immunizations are down and whooping cough has exploded, with more than six times as many infections in 2024 than in the previous year.

Vaccine skepticism has been around for more than two centuries, as long as there have been vaccines, and is a primary culprit in this public health debacle. Skepticism has continued to transform as the diseases the vaccines target appear to have been controlled — like the elimination of polio in the U.S.

Ironically, these vaccine victories have helped to fuel vaccine skepticism. Anti-vaccine individuals posit that vaccines are now unnecessary since the diseases they prevent are seemingly gone and forgotten. But they are still a threat all over the world when not enough children are given lifesaving vaccines.

If there was a recent "gateway drug" equivalent for vaccine skepticism, it would have to be the vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV. This series of shots, which prevents around 90 percent of cervical cancers caused by HPV, was approved in the U.S. in 2006 despite objections that, somehow, getting a jab that prevents a common cancer in women would lead to promiscuity.

Thanks to this vaccine, though, infections with HPV types that cause most related cancers have

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