The Importance of Vaccines

Vaccines (also known as ‘immunizations’) are one of the most proactive steps you can take to protect your health. People’s Community Clinic promotes the recommended vaccine schedule for most patients. Why? Because vaccines work.

Let’s take a look into the science behind vaccines to see how they’re so effective in stemming the spread of contagious disease.
 

What are vaccines?

So what exactly is a vaccine? A vaccine is a very small dose of an agent that is similar to a virus, often a much weaker or inactive form of the virus itself. The dose stimulates our immune system to produce the antibodies needed to fight off the disease. This allows the body to develop immunity and fight off the disease efficiently next time it’s encountered.

Vaccines are an excellent example of preventative medicine: the practice of reducing risk and costs associated with treating an illness by working proactively to prevent the illness from developing in the first place.

An infographic using pictures to show that the body produces antibodies to fight a weakened form of the disease, which is injected during vaccination, so that it can better destroy the real germ later on.

 

The Bigger Picture

Since their discovery in the late 1700’s vaccines have worked to slow the spread of many debilitating and deadly diseases.

In the 1950’s the U.S.A. saw a rate of over 55,000 cases of polio a year. Thanks to the success of the polio vaccine, in 2017 there were only 113 cases reported. In 1980 the World Health Organization declared smallpox completely eradicated worldwide. Smallpox once took the lives of hundreds of thousands each year, yet successful global deployment of vaccines took that number down to zero. Vaccines save lives every day.
 

Herd Immunity

The concept of “herd immunity” helps explain the remarkable effectiveness of vaccines. We may feel that vaccines are something we do for ourselves to protect our own bodies from contagious disease. But the fact is, when we receive a vaccine we are helping protect our friends, families, and community as well.

Each person who receives a vaccine reduces their own risk of contracting a disease, subsequently reducing their risk of spreading the disease to others which in turn reduces everyone else’s risk of getting sick. So we all see the benefit of each vaccine, even those who chose to remain unvaccinated.
 

So, Why Should I Vaccinate?

You may be asking yourself: “If everyone else’s vaccines protect me from illness, and the rate of disease has already been dramatically reduced, do I still need to get a vaccine?” The answer is “yes!”

This excerpt from the CDC may help illustrate why:

“In 1974, Japan had a successful pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination program, with nearly 80% of Japanese children vaccinated. That year the country saw only 393 reported cases of pertussis, and there were no deaths from pertussis.

But then rumors began to spread that pertussis vaccination was no longer needed and that the vaccine was not safe. By 1976 the rate of infants vaccinated against pertussis in Japan dropped to 10%. In 1979 Japan suffered a major pertussis epidemic, with more than 13,000 cases of whooping cough and 41 deaths. In 1981 the government began vaccinating with acellular pertussis vaccine, and the number of pertussis cases dropped again.”

Each person who forgoes a recommended vaccine raises their own chance of contracting the disease and everyone else’s risk along with it. Even if we reduce the spread of a disease to only a few cases each year there is always a chance another epidemic could occur if we don’t take preventative measures.

Protect yourself and your community; follow the recommended vaccine schedule suggested by your doctor.