Why Vaccines Should Be Mandatory
Vaccination is a highly controversial argument. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and doctors highly recommend it, but some people are against it. There are several good reasons both to get and not get vaccinated; some parents say that giving a child multiple vaccinations for different diseases at the same time increases the risk of harmful side effects and can overload the immune system (WHO, n.d.). Some parents also feel vaccines can cause illnesses, death, and possible long-term health effects. While some parents oppose their children getting vaccinated out of fear that vaccines can lead to long-term health problems, vaccines should be mandatory for everyone because vaccines help prevent epidemics, help protect those who can’t get vaccinated, and vaccines save lives.
First, vaccines should be mandatory for everyone because vaccines help prevent epidemics. Before the development of vaccines, according to the CDC diseases like whooping cough, polio, measles, Haemophilus influenzae, and rubella struck hundreds of thousands of infants, children and adults in the U.S. (CDC, 2014). Thousands of people died each year from them. After the development of vaccines, rates of the diseases declined, and most of them are practically non-existent in the U.S. today. Another example that shows that vaccines help prevent epidemics is according to the CDC, in 1921 there was more than 200,000 cases reported and more 15,000 deaths from diphtheria. After the widespread use of diphtheria toxoid in the late 1940s, only two cases of diphtheria have been recorded in the United States between 2004 and 2015 (Hamborsky, Kroger, & Wolfe, 2015).
Additionally, vaccines help protect those who can’t get vaccinated. According to the CDC, some people may not be able to get certain vaccines based on age, health conditions, or other factors even though they are vulnerable to illness. Vaccines can help prevent the spread of contagious diseases to them (CDC, 2017). This is also known as Community Immunity. People who are vaccinated are not only protecting themselves; they are also protecting the individuals in the community who are not vaccinated. Some of the people who may not be able to be vaccinated are infants, pregnant women, or immunocompromised individuals. These people first and only line of defense is other, vaccinated people, who when in the majority create a kind of protective shield which prevents them from coming in contact with the disease (Ideas.Ted.Com, 2015). When the majority of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against that disease because there is little opportunity for an outbreak (Sawyer, n.d.). Another example that shows how vaccines help protect those who can’t get vaccinated is the Smallpox Eradication Program, initiated by the WHO in 1966. The Smallpox Eradication Program was initially based on mass vaccination. Early observations in West Africa, data from Indonesia and the Asian subcontinent, showed that smallpox did not spread rapidly, and outbreaks could be quickly controlled by isolation of patients and vaccination of their contacts. Transmission of smallpox usually requires prolonged face-to-face contact. The program, therefore, shifted to find cases, combined with contact tracing, careful isolation of patients, vaccination and surveillance of contacts to contain outbreaks. The decision to move away from mass vaccination resulted in an acceleration of the program’s success (Lane, 2006).
Finally, the most important reason vaccines should be mandatory for everyone is vaccines save lives. According to the CDC, adults, 65 years of age or older and children under five years old are at high risk for flu-associated complications and account for the majority of flu-related deaths. The seasonal flu vaccine has saved 40,000 lives during a nine-year period, from 2005-2014 (CDC, 2015). Another example that shows that vaccines save lives is according to UNICEF; smallpox has been eradicated by vaccines, saving approximately 5 million lives annually (Unicef, 1996). Another disease almost eradicated worldwide is Polio. Since the launch of the global polio eradication in 1988, polio incidents have dropped than more than 99 percent. The Americas, Western Pacific, Europe, and South East Asia have all been certified polio-free. The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives. Polio is very close to being wiped out from the planet thanks to the vaccine (CDC, 2016). There has been a 99% or more reduction of cases and deaths due to vaccines in 6 deadly diseases which are Diphtheria, Measles, Mumps, Polio, Rubella, Smallpox, and Tetanus. It is clear that after that the introduction of vaccines into the U.S. there have been many Americans lives that have been saved (Roser, n.d.).
Indeed, while some parents oppose their children getting vaccinated out of fear that vaccines can lead to long-term health problems, vaccines should be mandatory for everyone for three main reasons. First, vaccines help prevent epidemics. Second, vaccines help protect those who can’t get vaccinated. But most importantly, vaccines save lives. Vaccines are critical to the control and eradication of deadly infectious diseases. A life without vaccines would be a scary world.
References
CDC. (2014, May 19). What Would Happen If We Stopped Vaccinations? Retrieved from CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm
CDC. (2015, March 30). CDC Study: Flu Vaccine Saved 40,000 Lives During 9 Year Period. Retrieved from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/flu-vaccine-saved-lives.htm
CDC. (2016, April 5). Updates on CDC’s Polio Eradication Efforts. Retrieved from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/polio/updates/
CDC. (2017, January 9). 10 Reasons To Get Vaccinated. Retrieved from CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/features/adultvaccinations/index.html
Hamborsky, J., Kroger, A., & Wolfe, C. (2015). Diphtheria. In EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PREVENTION OF VACCINE-PREVENTABLE DISEASES (13 ed., pp. 107-118). Public Health Foundation.
Ideas.Ted.Com. (2015, November 18). Why we must get vaccinated: to protect the people who can’t. Retrieved from http://ideas.ted.com/why-we-must-get-vaccinated-to-protect-the-people-who-cant/
Lane, J. (2006). Mass Vaccination and Surveillance/Containment in the Eradication of Smallpox. In Mass Vaccination: Global Aspects — Progress and Obstacles (pp. 17-29). Atlanta: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Roser, M. (n.d.). Vaccination. Retrieved from Our World In Data: https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination/
Sawyer, M. H. (n.d.). Corner Clinic: Our Experts Answer Your Health Questions. Retrieved from UC Health – UC San Diego: https://health.ucsd.edu/news/features/Pages/2015-08-27-corner-clinic-back-to-school-health.aspx
Unicef. (1996, June 11). Vaccines bring 7 diseases under control. Retrieved from Unicef: https://www.unicef.org/pon96/hevaccin.htm
WHO. (n.d.). Six common misconceptions about immunization. Retrieved from WHO: http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/detection/immunization_misconceptions/en/index6.html