Many people seem to be against vaccines for reasons that I don’t understand.  My father is an anestesiologist and he has a fellow co-worker who is extremely against all vaccinations and takes to social media like Facebook to voice his concerns.  There are studies  that link vaccinations to disorders like down syndrome and many studies say that vaccinations do nothing but I believe that there are no downsides to vaccinations; besides the little pinch.

Before vaccines, the only way to stay safe from various diseases was to contract the disease and beat it so your body would have antibodies from a disease and be able to kill it next time it traveled into your body.  This is called “naturally acquired immunity” and from natural immunity you have the symptoms of the disease and have to deal with any complications which in some cases can be deadly.  Vaccinations work the same way but are a shortcut because they take the antibodies of the weakened disease and insert a serum into your body.  This creates immunity without the full strain of a disease and without the risk of passing on a disease to friends or family.

One benefit of vaccinations is it is much cheaper to prevent disease than treat them like seen in the image above.  You can visit the blog of the photo to see a pro vaccination writers view on vaccination vs. not vaccinating at: https://vaxplanations.wordpress.com/tag/vaccine/.  In dollars vaccines have saved millions of dollars, “in the United States, researchers estimated that for every dollar spent, the vaccination program saved more than $5 in direct costs and approximately $11 in additional costs to society.”

Vaccines not only protect you but the people around you but this system can’t work if a majority of people aren’t vaccinated.  There can be false positives where maybe the vaccinations are reported to work but maybe in the end doesn’t but for the majority of vaccinations, they work and save lives.  There is no downside to doing something that can save your life.  Since you have weakened antibodies enter your body, you may feel cruddy for a few days but that sure beats contracting a the real disease.

Here: you can see just how effective vaccines have been in the US:

Percent Decrease in the US:

Measles: 99.9% Diphtheria: 100% Mumps: 98.7% Pertussis: 91.0% Smallpox: 100% Rubella: 99.9% Haemophilus influenzae type b, invasive: 99.8% Polio: 100% Tetanus: 98.6%

Sources Cited:

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/vaccines/understanding/pages/vaccinebenefits.aspx

https://vaxplanations.wordpress.com/tag/vaccine/

http://www.vaccines.gov/more_info/features/five-important-reasons-to-vaccinate-your-child.html