There are constantly and totally exaggerated complaints about vaccines not being safe, and vaccination and its negative effects on people. I have written earlier blogs here and here about vaccines, and this blog may be thought of as another in the series about vaccines.
Air Pollution
I was watching TV and the program stated that 3 million Chinese people would die prematurely each year due to the effects of air pollution. I looked this up online and found studies that say in one year worldwide, 7 million people died prematurely due to air pollution, and about 1/3 of those were in China.
The researchers didn’t have to count every death to come up with this figure. This figure was from determining the percentage of air pollution deaths among a smaller population of thousands of people and then applying it to the total deaths yearly.
Cancer Deaths Due To Smoking
The researchers did not count every cancer death due to smoking, they compared cancer deaths between two groups of thousands of people, one group smokers and the other group nonsmokers.
These figures do not prove that if you smoke you will get cancer, the figures prove that if you smoke your chances of getting cancer are much greater than if you do not smoke. The same thing applies to you if you step off the curb and cross the street: your risk of being injured or killed are greater than if you’re on the sidewalk. Also your risk is greater when there is a lot of traffic compared to very little traffic.
Vaccinations
Vaccines use the body’s own defenses to protect itself. The skin where the shot was given sometimes gets red and tender. This shows that the vaccine has caused the body’s defenses to think there is an infection there, and the body’s defenses come there to attack the vaccine. This is the whole idea behind vaccination: to fool the body into believing it has been attacked by the disease, and to arm itself and fight back and protect the body against this disease.
Vaccinations use your immune system to make protection against certain diseases. More than a hundred years ago, before scientists knew how the immune system worked, they had found a way to make vaccines that protected the person against the disease once the person was given the vaccine. Researchers have done many studies of vaccines to find an optimal point where the vaccine dose is effective and safe for individuals of each age group and size. Obviously a dose for an infant would not be the same as a dose for an adult. Too small a dose and the vaccine would not be effective; too large a dose could cause an overreaction to the vaccine, and possibly illness.
Thus we have a vaccine that is very safe and very effective. The researchers don’t claim that the vaccine is 100% safe or 100% effective, but it is as good as it can get.
The antivaccine people distort the truth, claiming that vaccines are poison. Well they are poison, to the diseases. Vaccines stimulate the body to make protection against a disease, lasting for years or even for life.
Vaccines, like smoking or air pollution, are not risk free or totally effective. The risk of being vaccinated is extremely low, where the risk from air pollution or smoking is much greater. There are some people who might smoke all their life and never get cancer. There are some people who never smoked but were exposed to second hand smoke when they were young, and later die from cancer.
The diseases that vaccines protect against are dangerous and deadly. Vaccinating everyone against a disease makes it much safer for everyone, and the vaccination is so much safer than the disease that the choice is plainly obvious. By being vaccinated you are protecting yourself and you are preventing the disease from spreading to others who have not been vaccinated. It is the right thing to do.
Antivaxxers and Spurious Claims
The antivaccine people are causing many people to die of diseases in order to save a few who might have an adverse reaction to vaccines. The antivaccine people claim that “Big Pharma” wants people to get vaccinated so they can make a lot of money. This claim has no basis. Early in the production of vaccines the makers were being sued, so many makers stopped making vaccines because they were losing money. Finally there were only 2 makers left, and one of them was going to stop, so there would be only a single maker left. The US government stepped in and created the VICP to protect the makers from having to stop losing money. This program gives those who claim they were harmed by vaccines the right to receive compensation from a special administrative proceeding.
It’s important to remember that vaccination is now more important than ever. The overuse of antibiotics has caused the effectiveness of antibiotics to drop to where many germs are now resistant. The only way to protect yourself from dangerous and deadly diseases is to get vaccinated.
Your doctor or healthcare provider should give you advice on vaccination. It is prudent and wise to take his or her advice.
The researchers are finding ways to vaccinate people to prevent cancer. As more knowledge of cancer is gathered, more methods will be found to prevent it, rather than try to cure it. Vaccines will help us live long and healthy lives, cancer free.
