Tweet

Once upon a time, polio was the most feared disease in the country. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the deadly illness caused paralysis in the entire body. It left victims with no control over the brain or spinal cord and killed approximately 10,000 people from the years of 1950 to 1955.

Today, polio is rare, and scientists have developed a vaccine against it, which is what led to its near eradication. According to the CDC, in 2016, 91.9 percent of children in the United States aged 19 to 35 months received the polio vaccination, which is given in three doses.

Polio is not the only disease that vaccines have nearly eradicated. Another example is smallpox. The smallpox vaccine got rid of the disease to the point where children don’t have to get the vaccine anymore.

But what would happen if people avoided vaccinations altogether? 

What happens is diseases that were once deadly to entire continents come back. According to vaccinestoday.eu, France is one of the several European countries facing a measles outbreak. France has reported over 2,500 cases alongside their neighbors with 3,697 in Italy, 3,039 in Greece and 1,198 in Romania. According to the European Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measles is the most contagious among influenza, smallpox, mumps, pertussis and rubella/diphtheria. 

When enough people choose not to vaccinate themselves or their children from potentially severe diseases, all it takes is a few people traveling from infected countries to bring it back to the U.S.   

This phenomenon of avoiding vaccinations is not a recent one; it started in the early 1800s with a premature version of the smallpox vaccine. There was a smallpox outbreak, and according to healthline.com, people were injecting others and themselves with “part of a cowpox blister to protect them from smallpox.” Those who did so faced criticism on sanitary and religious grounds and encountered political objections. That was what marked the start of vaccine opposition.

The people who choose to not vaccinate themselves or their children are sometimes referred to as, according to healthline.com, “anti-vaxxers.” They still exist today in the form of skeptical new parents and those who let pseudoscience lead them to hazy conclusions.

According to research done by the CDC, about 1.3 percent of those born in 2015 received no vaccinations. Those choosing not to fully vaccinate their kids, along with those choosing not to be vaccinated, have their own reasons.

Chephra McKee, a pharmacy student from Texas Tech University, said one common reason is religion, which is “most likely linked to a complete refusal of all vaccines.” Some with this point of view claim there is human fetal tissue used in some vaccines. The people on this side of the spectrum can be hard to persuade otherwise since their reasoning is based on their religious beliefs.

Another common reason people refuse vaccines is due to safety concerns. According to McKee, most of these concerns stem from Facebook posts or poorly sourced articles. Another way anti-vaxxers form their opinions is through word of mouth; some unverified information becomes sensationalized, talked about within peers and then makes one rare instance or coincidence seem common.

For example, according to McKee, a common misconception between this group is that vaccines cause autism.

Ruth White, nurse practitioner at Grand View, said, “autism often shows up between 10 months to two years, right in the time when you’re getting vaccines.” According to the CDC, babies in their first two years of life are getting more vaccines than at any other age. 

This coincidence is often what leads paranoid parents to draw a false correlation between vaccines and autism.

The CDC has debunked this and reported, “studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing ASD (autism spectrum disorder).”

Another common reason anti-vaxxers cite is the desire for more information. Parents want to know the risks, benefits and side effects of vaccines before blindly agreeing to vaccinate their children. According to McKee, they desire credible sources such as physicians, and they want to be able to talk to someone knowledgeable without being swayed one way or the other.

“Each vaccine has a little bit of a different risk profile,” White said. 

These might include swelling or redness at the area of vaccination. However, White did not share or know of any serious risks associated with vaccines.

According to McKee, another argument anti-vaxxers use in their favor is wanting their children to contract certain diseases in order to fight them off and build immunity. Many in this group believe that natural immunity is the strongest. These parents would also rather not put extra chemicals into their kids’ bodies, and they think that with a healthy diet and exercise, their kids will dodge diseases

“I don’t see that making medical sense,” White said.

Others may believe some diseases that kids are vaccinated against are not common enough to be worth the vaccination. 

According to White, “the data really shows that if you don’t get (vaccinated), you’re putting your child at risk.”

While those who are not vaccinated could end up avoiding disease, and those who are vaccinated could still contract mild versions of diseases, rare instances happen. These reasons should motivate parents, guardians and all who are eligible for vaccinations to be as safe and preventative as possible.

For instance, according to the CDC, since August of 2014, the United States has confirmed 404 cases of AFM, or acute flaccid myelitis, a potentially severe illness that leads to weakness and sometimes paralysis of the arms and legs.

“While we don’t know the cause of most of the AFM cases, it’s always important to practice disease-prevention steps, such as staying up-to-date on vaccines, washing your hands and protecting yourself from mosquito bites,” the CDC reported.

The CDC reports that over 90 percent of known cases have been in children in over 46 states, and one victim is the niece of Grand View student Victoria Vesely.

In mid-September this year, Vesely’s niece from Minnesota had common cold symptoms such as coughing, a runny nose and not feeling well in general. The doctors ran some tests and didn’t think too much about it. They put her on antibiotics.  

The next day, Vesely’s niece complained of a strange pain in her legs and was having a hard time walking. 

“It took about 48 hours for its full effects to take on,” said Vesely, referring to AFM.

Within a short amount of time, Vesely’s niece went from experiencing common cold symptoms to having no control over her own body. Her body tried fighting it, but once AFM attacked her central nervous system, it gained control of her brain and spinal cord.

Vesely’s niece is currently in a medically induced coma. Doctors are working on finding out exactly what causes this disease. Unfortunately, as Vesely explained it, by the time doctors get spinal fluid extracted from victims, the disease has left the body but its effects remain.

According to the CDC, “patients’ symptoms have been most similar to complications of infection with certain viruses, including poliovirus, non-polio enteroviruses, adenoviruses and West Nile virus.”

Vesely emphasized that although AFM seems similar to polio, as they can both lead to paralysis of the body, the two are not the same. Doctors are just comparing AFM to polio since symptoms are similar and both diseases are extremely rare today.

Although it’s too soon to say that a vaccine could have prevented AFM from sprouting in the U.S., this is a terrifying example of what could happen to kids whose guardians choose not to vaccinate them against diseases that could turn deadly.

According to Star Tribune, a reported victim of AFM, also from Minnesota, is 5-year-old Sophia Ayouche. Sophia and her twin brother experienced the same cold symptoms, but Sophia was diagnosed with AFM this fall and lost the ability to walk while her twin brother dodged the extremity of the disease.

Although there is no evidence of a correlation between AFM and vaccines, the Ayouche twins were most likely given the same vaccines when they were born, yet one faced paralysis and the other suffered the common cold.

“People are blaming people not vaccinating, and maybe there’s something in other vaccines that could stop (AFM), but we just don’t know,” Vesely said.

Although vaccines are not 100 percent effective and completely risk-free, the concept of herd immunity is an important one to consider. Herd immunity, according to vaccines.gov, refers to the idea that when the majority of people are vaccinated, it prevents that patient from getting a disease which also prevents them from spreading it to others. So, when one person is protected, so are those around them, and outbreaks become less likely.

According to the CDC, an example of this phenomenon is with pneumococcal disease, which causes severe infections to the ears, blood, lungs and brain. Those most prone to this disease are adults ages 65 and older and infants 2 years and younger. Infants and young children were given approval for its vaccine before adults were, and when infants started getting the vaccine, the number of pneumococcal disease deaths in both young children and older adults decreased. 

 This tells us that even though children were the ones being vaccinated, that had a great influence on the disease’s spread among adults. The children were protecting those around them just by getting vaccinated.

Another reason herd immunity works is because it allows those who are unable to get vaccinated a chance at being more protected from certain diseases. This ineligible group includes newborns and those with chronic diseases including cancer, HIV/AIDS, type 1 diabetes and more.

Additionally, each disease has its own threshold for herd immunity. According to historyofvaccines.org, when “the vaccination rate drops significantly below this level, the level of community protection may not be enough to prevent the disease from spreading.”

For example, polio’s threshold is 80 to 86 percent. If less than this percentage of people are vaccinated, an outbreak is more likely.

Another instance happened in the late 1990s in England with the measles, mumps and rubella diseases. Their vaccination rates dropped below the threshold to under 80 percent, and “a disease whose spread in the country had been halted more than a decade prior was once again endemic,” reported historyofvaccines.org.

At the end of the day, the risks of not vaccinating children or getting vaccinated throughout your life are more severe than the risks of vaccinating.

According to NPR, the measles have made their way from Europe and Israel, another country with a recent outbreak, to our country’s east coast. Dozens of cases have been reported in New York in Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities. What isn’t surprising is that a handful of the citizens of those towns “have vaccination rates between 44 percent and 80 percent,” NPR said, while the threshold for measles is 93 to 95 percent. 

The consequences of avoiding vaccinations are far too dangerous and are becoming close to home. 

When it comes to making a decision about vaccines, White said, “research it. Make your decision based on scientific data, not on personal bias or pseudoscience.”

Just as the Minnesota siblings proved, vaccinating or not does not guarantee one result or another. Someone who has never been vaccinated before could live a life free of disease, yet someone who is vaccinated could still contract mild versions of diseases.

“You can’t rely on just vaccines or hoping your kids are exposed to them and (that) they build immunity,” Vesely said. “You need a balance of both.”