Case Study: Should School Campuses Enforce Vaccination Rules

Should School Campuses Enforce Vaccination Rules? Anywhere from 3,000 to 49,000 people die each year here in the US from flu related causes. I think all school campuses should have rules making certain vaccinations mandatory. Public schools can become breeding grounds for bacterial and viral pathogens that can make students extremely sick. When students do inevitably become sick they miss class which can negatively affect their classroom performance. By simply enforcing vaccination rules in all campuses students and faculty will have less absences and obviously, not get sick as often. Cold and flu epidemics could also decrease. So why exactly should one get a vaccination? First and probably most obvious is the fact that vaccinations are proven to reduce the likelihood of contracting diseases and illnesses and can even reduce the severity of said diseases/illnesses considerably. Noël Merino states in his article “Introduction to Vaccines: At Issue” “Vaccines work by imitating an infection, causing the body to create antibodies to disease, thereby becoming immune to future infection” (Merino). Vaccines are essentially teaching the …show more content…
Tolsma’s paper “Protecting Our Herd” touches this subject very well. Tolsma says “As explained previously, (205) herd immunity occurs "[when a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease ... " (206). Because the majority of those within the population are immunized, those that are not, or those that cannot be immunized (207) are protected,” (Sec. IV). Some people have underlying diseases such as AIDS or conditions like pregnancy that prevents them from being able to get vaccinations. Because of this they are at risk of getting sick, and if everybody that could get their vaccine got one the risk would largely decrease. So getting a vaccination does not just protect the individual, it protects others who may be