JEP mag

Importance of Vaccinations
Written By: Dan Hirschhorn
Vaccinations play a very important
role in protecting us, the people
of the world, no matter what your
ethnic, religious, or economic background
is. There are benefits of the masses
getting vaccines, one such benefit is
that even the people that do not receive
immunizations are less likely to contract
it. This is important to keep in mind, as
those who are unable to receive vaccinations
for various reasons such as elderly,
those who are pregnant, and people
with severe allergies are still kept safe
with every other person that is vaccinated.
Gambia was able to get rid of their
Hib disease problem entirely when just
70 percent of their overall population
was vaccinated. The opposite can be
achieved if people decided they did not
need vaccines any more, for whatever
reason they may have. If a large number
of people stop receiving vaccinations,
then the chances of a disease outbreak
increase greatly. “The Andrew Wakefield
study did just that, greatly reducing
the amount of people that got vaccines
by instilling fear in the people, a fear
of autism. His study effectively caused
a measles, mumps, and rubella disease
outbreak, which could have easily been
prevented if they kept on receiving the
proper vaccinations for the disease”
(Rao para 13). The number of people
affected by MMR was just several dozen
in 1997, but that number quickly skyrocketed
to over 2,000 cases in 2011.
Outbreaks of the whooping cough in the
United States have been linked to low
vaccination rates. There are many types
of vaccines that someone can receive,
and each type has certain advantages
and disadvantages that go along with
them. The first type of vaccination that
you can receive is a live attenuated vaccine,
where a weak asymptotic form of
a virus is introduced into the body. This
form will not cause sickness, instead it
will allow the body, specifically the immune
system, to recognize the antigens
that the virus has, and be able to fight
it in the future, if you were ever to encounter
it again. This is good for giving
someone lifelong immunity to a virus, as
it is live and allows the body to adapt
to it. However, this form of vaccination
is not used on people with weakened immune
systems, as that could lead to the
virus causing sickness. Refrigeration is required
to keep the pathogens alive long
enough to be used. Common vaccines
used in this life style are the measles,
mumps, rubella vaccine, the chickenpox
vaccine, influenza vaccine, and the rotavirus
vaccine. Inactivated vaccines are
those where the bacteria or viruses are
killed off with chemicals or heat to accomplish
a similar effect as the live virus
when introduced into the body. The immune
system is still able to learn from the
dead cells, and is able to fight live versions
of the virus or bacteria if it were to
encounter them in the future. This style is
much safer to give, as there is no risk of
the virus or bacteria mutating back into
its disease causing form, and it is able
to be easily stored as there is no risk of
killing the pathogens. Seeing as you are
administering dead versions of the virus
into your body, it takes more doses of
6 TIME May 31, 2017