I am writing a research paper for my English 102 class and I seem to have overly estimated my writing abilities.
vaccinations importance in today's world
Introduction
Vaccinations play an extremely important role in keeping people healthy. The importance of vaccines are to prevent diseases that could otherwise caught serious illness or possible death. "Recommended childhood vaccines through age 6 currently save 42,000 lives, prevent 20 million cases of disease, and save $70 billion each year" (Immunization Partnership, 2015). It is due to vaccines that people are able walk around in public without complete fear of sickness. The eradication of sicknesses begin with children and the best way to effectively cause diseases that could spread and cause harm to others is to nip it in the butt at a young age. However, there is a movement that opposes vaccinations and believes it is a viral myth that helps others and is a ploy for pharmaceutical companies to make money. For the sake of public safety and health it is a necessary action for vaccinations to be spread across the world due to the spread of risk reduced and as well as the lives that could be protected.
The reason as to why vaccines are so important is because of their ability to protect people against a certain disease. Vaccines work in a way by activating the body's immune system. When the body is invaded by a virus or a germ it doesn't recognize, the body sends help to attack it and then adapts to remember the virus so that it won't suffer as much the next time. Vaccinations are incredibly useful in this aspect as they inject a dead or rather very weak piece of the virus so that the body can build immunity to it. This, however, isn't an all-powerful solution that can stop you from being sick. It just significantly increases one's chances of not getting sick. Even upon getting sick, your body is more likely to be able to fight it off better thanks to the antibodies developed from the vaccine.
Middle
Vaccines do not simply just protect yourself, but the people around you as well. This is known as "herd immunity". "Vaccines cause "herd immunity," which means if the majority of people in a community have been vaccinated against a disease, an unvaccinated person is less likely to get sick because others are less likely to get sick and spread the disease" (Do Something, 2015). Therefore it is important to get as many people vaccinated against diseases as much as possible. Diseases such as smallpox, polio, malaria, and hookworm have almost nearly been completely eradicated thanks to vaccines. This is due to the fact that vaccines have limited and prevented a host place for these viruses and now they have almost gone extinct.
Infectious diseases are something people need to understand can spread effortlessly with or without the help of people. This is because of direct and indirect contact. Direct infections are often done through physical contact and can be passed on through normal activities in everyday life. "Examples of such are on public transportation, school, and work. Transmission occurs when an infected person touches or exchanges body fluids with someone else. This can happen before an infected person is aware of the illness. Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can be transmitted this way" (Higuera, 2016). Although a disease like herpes, can not be prevented with a vaccine, it is important to recognize the possible diseases like polio and Ebola that can be prevented. This is why cleanliness and awareness are important in the prevention of illnesses. However, simply being careful does not mean that one will not get sick. Indirect diseases for example can be spread through air and other mechanisms. Airborne transmission is something that can be extremely difficult to deal with as germs are so small they can't be seen. If an individual who has measles enters a room and then leaves, the measles will still remain in the room and can contaminate the next person or people that enter. Unfortunately, some viruses are capable of living off their host for a short period of time. For example, one can sneeze into their hand and then open a door right after, leaving some of the germs onto it. These germs could then on pass on to another and infect that person increasing the spread of sickness. This is why vaccinations are so important. This is not to say that preventive measures such as washing hands and being clean are not recommended but are also another way that can help prevent diseases and thus should be used alongside vaccination.
Although we are fortunate to have reduced mortality rates regarding diseases to what it is today, it is a tragedy when recalling to the death rates in a pre-vaccine era. Diseases though, have unfortunately not yet disappeared. The fact remains that people today still suffer and that there are thousands of people in other countries who lack the ability to get the help they deserve. This is evident in the fact that, "More than 350,000 cases of measles were reported from around the world in 2011, with outbreaks in the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and Europe. In that same year, 90% of measles cases in the U.S. were associated with cases imported from another country. Only the fact that most Americans are vaccinated against measles prevented these clusters of cases from becoming epidemics" (Vaccines & Immunizations, 2017). That is to say people are only able to live the peaceful lives they live today simply because of the vaccinations that they prepare themselves with. Unfortunately, there is a rising movement against vaccinations leading people to deny their authenticity.
Vaccines have been heralded by many people as one of the greatest inventions in history. The lives that are kept healthy each year number millions and diseases slowly become eradicated that once took thousands of lives each year. Unfortunately, there is a semi-large movement against vaccination, that believes people shouldn't get them. Their beliefs are not wrong, but the facts supporting their beliefs could stand to have more factual evidence supporting them. This opposition, otherwise known as anti-vaxxers, is not new but something that began in the 1800's. Simply put, the idea of injecting a minor part of the virus that people were afraid of in them, made vaccinations sound completely ridiculous. Overall, there seems to be a lack of trust in the government itself, as well as a rumor that it causes autism in people.
This is almost entirely due to Andrew Jeremy Wakefield's study that made claim there was a correlation between autism and vaccinations. The news promoted such a case seriously increasing the awareness of the study to an excessive degree which led to many people in the following years preventing their children from getting shots. Of course, studies were excessively done based on Wakefield's notes to see if it was true and it was found that the statement he made was false. It was also noted that false recordings were held in the medical journal he published and he was soon discredited after. The news had not used the same effort to spread the truth of such out as they had done previously when this information was released.
Another theory is that people constantly believe it is a ploy by pharmaceutical companies that wish to profit off health insurance and forcing shots into its people each year. This is mostly due to a mistrust in people itself and the awareness that pharmaceutical companies do indeed make money off of it. Of course this underlying matter is in relation to the fact that healthcare itself is not free and an unhappy following is natural from having to pay for something people may not necessarily want. Especially in consideration that not all vaccinations work one hundred percent.
Vaccinations, especially against the flu, may not always protect them against sickness. There are several cases in which an individual gets the flu even after getting the flu shot. This causes many to further lose their faith in vaccinations and pharmacies. The reason as to why is that the human body adapts differently to each season of the flu as well as the fact that every year the virus changes ever so slightly. According to the Forefront, "the problem is that the virus changes ever so slightly from year to year. The site the antibodies recognize could still be there, but it may no longer be the crucial one to neutralize the virus. Antibodies produced from our first encounters with the flu, either from vaccines or infection, tend to take precedence over ones generated by later inoculations. So even when the vaccine is a good match for a given year, if someone has a history with the flu, the immune response to a new vaccine could be less protective" (Wood, 2018). This results in possibilities that people may still receive the flu even after a vaccine. Of course, often people will receive only minor symptoms of such and will not suffer the full course of sickness they would have if they hadn't gotten the shot. Recognition of such is not common though and there are many who personally believe they were tricked or wronged into getting the shot and thus refuse it the next coming year and even to their children. This is dangerous as the lack of vaccinations in a community increase risk and possibly cause reemergence of some diseases.
Measles for example is an extremely contagious disease, that was at one point of time, declared extinct. However, with the current belief that people are safe just from being clean and the sense of security from the lack of suffering, less people in the population are getting vaccinations each year. Thanks to such a predicament, "dozens of outbreaks and thousands of cases have been reported-including an outbreak involving Disneyland that led to more than 300 cases in the United States and Canada" (Correll, 2018). This is understandable as not everyone outside the United States has had their vaccinations done and with recent years, less people have had vaccinations, leaving them vulnerable to infection by those who do have measles. Now diseases that have previously been missing in the country have now been reemerging into areas due to anti-vaccination movements.
In conclusion, it is a necessary movement to know that vaccinations are still important in today's world. Outbreaks of diseases are now showing up once more. The controversy against vaccinations makes it difficult to keep people safe. Herd-Immunity is almost non-existent now in today's society. An awareness of the errors in antivaxxers beliefs needs to be made more public. Despite being public information, the general public seems to lack the awareness of such pieces of evidence.