The two numbers, as Health points out, aren’t contradictory. Besides the numbers being from different decades, let’s simply look at the CDC statement again:
“In the decade before 1963 when a vaccine became available, nearly all children got measles by the time they were 15 years of age. It is estimated 3 to 4 million people in the United States were infected each year. Also each year, among reported cases, an estimated 400 to 500 people died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 1,000 suffered encephalitis (swelling of the brain) from measles.”
So an estimated 500 people died among the reported cases, not among the total estimated 3 to 4 million.
The total estimated cases and the total reported cases are two totally different numbers. To figure out the percentage, you need to use the number of reported cases of measles, not the total estimated cases, which assume many unreported cases.
The question is how many reported cases there were.
Guess what, on a different part of the CDC website, they write there were 500,000 reported cases. 500 deaths would be 1 in 1000.
Doomsday, you’re either lying by covering up the inconvenient facts, or more likely, you’ve been had by the anti vax websites and groups.
Either way, the whole premise of your “the CDC is lying” claim is totally false.