Vaccinations - good or bad

Vaccines are here. At first, and with their inventor Pasteur, vaccines were suspect. Then they were accepted. By 1855, the first required vaccines for school children were instituted in Massachusetts. They had a good run, with public trust almost complete. Then came the first problem with a vaccine that couldn’t track a tricky disease, influenza. Then came a correlation of a vaccine with a worse condition, autism. Now vaccines again are suspect once again.

Case A. We see a decline in flu cases as the use of flu vaccines increase. Too complicated for many is this simple relation. They see only the first part, the “decline in flu cases,” and so getting the flu vaccine is unnecessary and always inconvenient. So, they don’t. So, more flu cases occur. This initiates a cycle via this simple rule: Fewer flu cases this year implies fewer flu shots next year implies more flu cases. Surprised?

Case B. In another situation, recall the 1998 (false) report that the MMR (Measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine causes autism. Many “enlightened” parents then declined to have their children so vaccinated. Even after the report was summarily debunked, some parents still continued to deny MMR for their kids. The result was an increase in these diseases in children.

In the first case we have a false feedback logic and in the second, uninformed reasoning. One problem is that statistical evidence is never 100%. Give injections of purified water to twenty million and some side effects will occur, statistically insignificant to be sure, but some will read causation in there.

Currently, required vaccinations for children are true saviors of our very lives:

Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP)

Inactivated polio vaccine (IPV)

Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR)

Varicella (chickenpox)

Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib)

Pneumococcal conjugate (PCV13)

Hepatitis B (Hep B)

We would be in deep, really deep, trouble if these vaccines required annual booster shots.

The Pros and Cons of vaccinations are well studied. At the website https://vaccines.procon.org/, you can find a balanced and reasonable set of both. For example, on the pro side, vaccinations have a huge multiplier effect in costs saved and earned. Money is always big! As well, general health is strongly supported by vaccinations. However, each pro and each con consumes a full paragraph of information. Multiply each by ten, and “everyman” becomes overloaded. What is important these days is that many people will select just one of these and magnify it to become the one and only pro or con, forgetting the others.

Vaccines are not only here, they are here to stay.

BTW. If you have a vaccination preference, you may be called a “vaxxer” or “antivaxxer.”

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