Vaccine Pros And Cons Essay
My topic is over vaccines in the United States and how we need them to keep our country healthy. My main points are the reasons we have them, the health benefits of the vaccines, and the safety concerns about when we don’t have routine vaccines.
My first point is that there are reasons we have vaccines. Vaccines can keep you healthy, keep you from a life or death situation, the diseases that vaccines prevent are normally expensive to care for once you get them, anyone around you is at risk of getting sick, vaccines are safe, the diseases they prevent aren’t gone, and they are important to your health. Without vaccines, many more illnesses would still be common and a lot more people would be sick. Things like polio, which have been wiped out in the United States, would still be around and still harming the nation.
Polio is a great example of what vaccines can do. In 1955, the year the polio vaccine was introduced; there were a recorded 28,985 cases in the United States. Between 1955 and 1965, the amount of people with polio went from 28,985 to 0 reported cases in the U.S. In that time, the death count also went from 1,043 deaths to 0. Any cases of polio reported after 1965 were often brought from other parts of the world and were not …show more content…
caused in the United States. This proves that if people are vaccinated, illnesses can be stopped and it might eventually die out.
Another thing is that if we do have vaccines, illnesses can’t come back. In Japan, 80% of children were getting the whooping cough vaccine in the year 1974, causing only 393 cases of it to be reported throughout the whole country, with no reported death. After this, the immunization rates dropped till only 10% of children were being vaccinated. Because no one was getting vaccinated, in the 1979, more than 13,000 people got whooping cough and of that group, 41 died. The disease numbers dropped again once it became a routine vaccination again. The people believed their families were safe from getting sick, and so began to not take the proper precautions just in case, causing an epidemic of the illness. If we don’t take the precautions beforehand, it might get out of hand and cause an epidemic.
Of course, another problem is when people in general refuse to get vaccines. A good example is when an outbreak of the measles happened in Texas in 2013. The individual who originally contracted travelled overseas without the vaccine before returning to Texas, without knowing they had contracted measles. They went to their church, where the pastor is said to preach to not use vaccines, and the small outbreak began there since almost everyone in the church did not have the vaccine. If the original individual had gone and gotten the vaccine, the outbreak would have probably not happened, and the outbreak wouldn’t have been a problem to begin with. Because they did not take precautions and distrusted vaccines, they were not safe from the illness when it arrived.
My second point is the health benefits from vaccines. A lot of the benefits are listed in point one, but those are not the only benefits. Other benefits can be public health in general and travelling.
With vaccines, public health is greatly improved. Take two towns , one where vaccines are commonplace, and one where only a handful of people have vaccines. Now, in the first town, if someone gets something that we have vaccines for, like whooping cough, then it might spread to some people without vaccines, and a few with. In the second town, however, the illness will probably affect a large portion of the unvaccinated people, and a few of the vaccinated people. Because one group is vaccinated, most of them are okay, but because there were some people who decided not to have the vaccine, it is not 100% safe.
Of course, even with vaccines, we’ll never be 100% safe or guaranteed something won’t make a comeback, like the measles are trying to do right now, but we are guaranteed the illnesses will have to fight to make a full comeback.
Another problem is travel.
When people travel outside of the United States, they risk getting an illness because if they don’t have their vaccines, they’re more likely to pick up on the native sicknesses that people from outside the area aren’t used to. This means that if they were to travel home, they could cause an outbreak of something, like mentioned above in the Texas story. This obviously doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it can be bad for public health in the general area. When people also travel in from other countries can be a problem. Such as with the minor Ebola outbreak, we aren’t always in control of the situation, but then it’s a problem of containing the outbreak and keeping everyone safe from the
illness.
My third point is the safety concerns. The biggest problem with people not getting vaccines is that it could lead to epidemics or pandemics. In the past, we had problems with epidemics and pandemics a lot. A big one was the Black Plague. The Black Plague took out 1/3 the population of Europe and destroyed the economy for many years. They didn’t have a lot of the medical equipment we have now to help keep them healthy. The plague itself was believed to have started in Asia in the early 1330’s, and reached Europe in 1346. Its peak was between 1346-1353, and reoccurred again repeatedly throughout the 14th through the 17th century.
My first point is that there are reasons we have vaccines. Vaccines can keep you healthy, keep you from a life or death situation, the diseases that vaccines prevent are normally expensive to care for once you get them, anyone around you is at risk of getting sick, vaccines are safe, the diseases they prevent aren’t gone, and they are important to your health. Without vaccines, many more illnesses would still be common and a lot more people would be sick. Things like polio, which have been wiped out in the United States, would still be around and still harming the nation.
Polio is a great example of what vaccines can do. In 1955, the year the polio vaccine was introduced; there were a recorded 28,985 cases in the United States. Between 1955 and 1965, the amount of people with polio went from 28,985 to 0 reported cases in the U.S. In that time, the death count also went from 1,043 deaths to 0. Any cases of polio reported after 1965 were often brought from other parts of the world and were not …show more content…
caused in the United States. This proves that if people are vaccinated, illnesses can be stopped and it might eventually die out.
Another thing is that if we do have vaccines, illnesses can’t come back. In Japan, 80% of children were getting the whooping cough vaccine in the year 1974, causing only 393 cases of it to be reported throughout the whole country, with no reported death. After this, the immunization rates dropped till only 10% of children were being vaccinated. Because no one was getting vaccinated, in the 1979, more than 13,000 people got whooping cough and of that group, 41 died. The disease numbers dropped again once it became a routine vaccination again. The people believed their families were safe from getting sick, and so began to not take the proper precautions just in case, causing an epidemic of the illness. If we don’t take the precautions beforehand, it might get out of hand and cause an epidemic.
Of course, another problem is when people in general refuse to get vaccines. A good example is when an outbreak of the measles happened in Texas in 2013. The individual who originally contracted travelled overseas without the vaccine before returning to Texas, without knowing they had contracted measles. They went to their church, where the pastor is said to preach to not use vaccines, and the small outbreak began there since almost everyone in the church did not have the vaccine. If the original individual had gone and gotten the vaccine, the outbreak would have probably not happened, and the outbreak wouldn’t have been a problem to begin with. Because they did not take precautions and distrusted vaccines, they were not safe from the illness when it arrived.
My second point is the health benefits from vaccines. A lot of the benefits are listed in point one, but those are not the only benefits. Other benefits can be public health in general and travelling.
With vaccines, public health is greatly improved. Take two towns , one where vaccines are commonplace, and one where only a handful of people have vaccines. Now, in the first town, if someone gets something that we have vaccines for, like whooping cough, then it might spread to some people without vaccines, and a few with. In the second town, however, the illness will probably affect a large portion of the unvaccinated people, and a few of the vaccinated people. Because one group is vaccinated, most of them are okay, but because there were some people who decided not to have the vaccine, it is not 100% safe.
Of course, even with vaccines, we’ll never be 100% safe or guaranteed something won’t make a comeback, like the measles are trying to do right now, but we are guaranteed the illnesses will have to fight to make a full comeback.
Another problem is travel.
When people travel outside of the United States, they risk getting an illness because if they don’t have their vaccines, they’re more likely to pick up on the native sicknesses that people from outside the area aren’t used to. This means that if they were to travel home, they could cause an outbreak of something, like mentioned above in the Texas story. This obviously doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it can be bad for public health in the general area. When people also travel in from other countries can be a problem. Such as with the minor Ebola outbreak, we aren’t always in control of the situation, but then it’s a problem of containing the outbreak and keeping everyone safe from the
illness.
My third point is the safety concerns. The biggest problem with people not getting vaccines is that it could lead to epidemics or pandemics. In the past, we had problems with epidemics and pandemics a lot. A big one was the Black Plague. The Black Plague took out 1/3 the population of Europe and destroyed the economy for many years. They didn’t have a lot of the medical equipment we have now to help keep them healthy. The plague itself was believed to have started in Asia in the early 1330’s, and reached Europe in 1346. Its peak was between 1346-1353, and reoccurred again repeatedly throughout the 14th through the 17th century.