Vaccine Controversy: Keep Us Healthy

Keep Us Healthy Recently there has been a bunch of controversy going around the news and social media about how vaccinations are useless, can cause diseases, and death. There are certain circumstances where this can happen, but it is very rare. As of the 2014 school year, all the states in the United States of America required each child, attending the school, to be immunized with certain vaccines. These certain vaccines protect against: tetanus, measles, rubella, diphtheria, and polio. I can understand if the people against vaccines were just talking about the influenza, but they aren’t. With the influenza virus the producers only pick a few strands that they feel will have a great impact on the population. If we look back to last year, …show more content…
Think of vaccines, as a car seat containing a child in an accident. We are going to look at some of the most important. Vaccinations can save a kids life! There have been many medical advances in the last couple years that can prevent a child from getting many more diseases than ever. Most diseases that once killed or injured many kids are close to being or completely eliminated. Vaccines are effective and very safe! Any vaccination that is given to anybody goes through a very careful and long testing by scientists and medical professionals. A lot of people complain about the pain that comes along with vaccines, but think of it as if you would rather have to get stuck by needles every day because you didn’t get vaccinated or getting one shot and not having to worry about getting the disease. Vaccines help keep loved ones from getting a serious illness. Over the past couple years pertussis (whooping cough) and measles have been appearing. There were approximately 21,000 cases of pertussis and 26 deaths in 2010. Most of the children that got the disease were under the age of six months. Finally, vaccines can save you time and money! For example, if a child was to get whooping cough, a school or daycare can be denied being able to attend. Some of the diseases can actually cause long lasting disabilities. These disabilities can cause high medical bills, lost time at work, and long-term disability care. …show more content…
To help find answers to some of the most important questions that are asked, I interviewed Dana L. Kapp, MSN; she is a pediatric nurse here in Saint Joseph. I asked her a couple questions, and all I could really get was a few answers because some of the questions were more of a personal opinion answers. I asked her why it is important to immunize children. Her answer was, “It is important to vaccinate to help control and hopefully eradicate dangerous diseases.” Another question that I asked her was, what the most important vaccinations a child should receive. Her response was, “There really isn’t a rule to which vaccine is more important than any other. Some diseases are more deadly than others but all vaccines we give are preventing an illness that can have devastating disabling outcomes.” I also asked her was how do vaccines work. Dana Kapp responded with, “Vaccines interact with the immune system and often produce an immune response similar to that produced by the natural infection, but they do not subject the recipient to the disease and its potential complications. Vaccines produce immunologic memory similar to that acquired by having the natural disease. I can go into Active vs. passive immunity if you want/need me to.” Also, I asked Dana Kapp, what would happen if we stopped immunizing; she responded “think if we stopped vaccinated then we would see pandemic type