The effectiveness of Vaccines and Herd Immunity
Herd Immunity is very important, but there are some growing problems.
The Effectiveness of Herd Immunity
Some diseases have been completely eradicated through vaccination, while the rate of infection for others has dropped. The most commonly cited success story is the eradication of smallpox.
Smallpox was caused by the virus variola. It was mostly spread through saliva and was very deadly. About 30% of all people infected with it died. Smallpox has existed in humans for at least 3000 years and was officially declared eradicated in 1979. The process that led up to this was painstaking, but due to the hundreds of millions of lives saved, worth it.[1]
In the mid 1960s smallpox was still infecting 15 million a year, 150 years after the vaccine was discovered. What it took was a large coordinated effort. Prior efforts had a few problems. They had two few vaccines and too few people to aid in vaccination. Then Bill Foege came up with a new method, surveillance and containment. This method includes finding people who were recently diagnosed with the disease and then to vaccinate everyone who had contact with them. This provided a small area of herd immunity, preventing the spread of the virus completely. [2]
Vaccination Today
The method of surveillance and containment only worked on smallpox because a vaccination before the symptoms worked. Other diseases that spread more easily, like the flu, need herd immunity beforehand to prevent an outbreak.
For a group of people to become fully immune they must reach a point called the “immunity threshold”. This threshold is dependent on how infectious a disease is. This is measured by the “basic reproduction number”, which is how many people would an average person infect if nobody was immune. For example the basic reproduction number for measles is between 12 and 18, and the rate for smallpox is between 3.6 and 6. The actual method of calculating the immunity threshold is complicated, because each disease and vaccine for it acts differently. This threshold for measles is around 83-94% of the population vaccinated, while smallpox is between 80-85%. [3][4]
The vaccination rate for measles is sitting at just under 92% in the United States, and is lower in many other countries. This may not be enough to prevent an outbreak. Another disease commonly vaccinated against is influenza. Unlike measles or smallpox this disease often mutates and comes in many variates. This means a new vaccine for it comes out every year and the threshold immunity changes. Over the five separate outbreaks the number required for herd immunity ranged from 13% to almost 100%, which is insane. We can’t expect out levels of immunity to be safe with those numbers. Only about 75% of elderly and high-risk patients get the vaccine, which is nowhere near enough. [5][6]
Our Herd Immunity is being weakened by people choosing not to take vaccines. This hurts everyone and increases the probability of a pandemic.
Great post @anarchyhasnogods, herd immunity is so important that it is part of social responsibility, just like recycling plastics or metals!!
If the disease doesn't infect the young, elderly and the immunocompromised ones, I actually won't mind seeing some big burst of measles and other disease that would spread fast and infect the community. This should be able to demonstrate why it is important to vaccinate.
I agree with you so much! When people dont get vaccinated it puts everyone at more risk. There is an area here in the Netherlands known as the Bible Belt where people get far less vaccinated and there was a massive measles outbreak there a couple of years ago. Really hope that people get more educated on vaccines! Thanks for the post.
I cannot agree with everything you've said. I have a baby and was very afraid of vaccination in that young age (autism etc.).
vaccines do not cause autism. That was started by a scientist making stuff up to try and save a failing career because he never did anything lmao
there was one "scientific" paper which showed that there might be a correlation between vaccinations and autism, however the paper has been proven untrue, but some people still choose to cite this paper and use its information to argue their point. Autism and vaccines have no causal link whatsoever. Dont worry :)
Do they call it the Bible Belt because people there get far less vaccinated?! Cos if yes then that's funny!
It's just crazy to see some of these charts and than hear someone say they don't believe in vaccinations...the world is so much better off with vaccinations, it's undeniable.
already there is somebody on my post talking about how vaccinations are bad.
honestly we need to fix the steemit community before we can go mainstream.
Great post (as always)
Just leaving this here for any dumbasses who will undoubtedly claim that vaccines causing autism.
Cause even if it did (it doesn't) you should still take the vaccine.
:-) I'm not claiming anything about no vaccinations.
One question especially for you.
Why are you saying something about dumbasses, you are undoubtedly vaccinated for everything. That dumbasses are not. You are and everybody who is not a dumbass is also. Why bother about dumbasses?
Because kids have started to die, even in Europe, from diseases that should belong to our history books.
Because even though he might be, there are people who just can't get vaccinated. Immunosuppresed patients for example are the weakest ones already and they can't get any protection by a simple flu shot or anything like that. If one of those gets a bad infection his life is in some serious danger because someone else was believing in some risks that were mostly made up by people claiming to be able to "free you of those risks by detoxing you" or stuff like that.
Many lives are saved by vaccines @anarchyhasnogods but some vaccines are doing harm than good and affected some people to lose a life.
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they almost never cause somebody to die, and that only happens hen their immune system had something wrong with it
It's not going to be a pandemic, which by the word itself means "it infects everyone". We don't like "epidemic", because I guess it isn't scary enough, but that would be far closer to the truth.
Also, it seems to me that 75% would be good enough to stop a wide outbreak, since islands of 60%--where we would have serious death rates in the susceptible 40%--isolated in oceans of 80% or better, which would firebreak the disease spreading.
I'm all in favor of people getting vaccinated. I'm not, however, terribly troubled by those that choose not to. At least not yet. Your post does, however, raise the question of how soon I ought to start worrying.
Im on the fence on this topic at the moment, until i can do further research. Thankfully i dont have children of my own to have to make this decision myself. Im sure vaccines were initially made to improve health and reduce the incidence of disease, however nowadays there is an argument on the matter of actually being able to trust the producers/suppliers/administers of such drugs. In a world where anybody can be bought with a promise of money and power we struggle to believe science on both sides of the argument. I do feel that while we are a free species we should still be able to choose whether our kids are vaccinated and not forced to go down a particular route without appropriate understanding. If someone has fears about vaccination, then proper support and education would be useful. Knowing that your physician actually cares about the health of you and your child, rather than filling a prescription to get commision would also go a long way. Calling people stupid or 'dumbasses' for holding a different opinion only creates division.
Finally, just to play devils advocate a little bit. Arguments like this are quickly moving legislators towards mandatory vaccination. When this happens, all children would be vaccinated against their parents wishes with anything that government says is neccessary. The way the world is going at the moment, would you be happy to allow such decision to made without any thought or input from you as a parent? While we are free we have a right to say no to any process or procedure.
so what you're saying is parents should have the right to kill their children?
I havent said that anywhere in my post and that is a very flippant, simplistic way to respond. I think that people should be free to do their own research and make informed decisions for themselves. If less people are choosing to vaccinate, to me that is a sign that trust in the process is failing. Big pharma are now in the news regularly having done some new insidious deed that negatively impacts health of people, animals and/or the planet, yet we are expected to explicitly trust that vaccines are safe and untampered with. Im not arguing that vaccination is bad - it is a process we use in aquaculture to protect fish stocks effectively - however i also see in these cases that suppliers want commission and will say anything to get a sale. Even in fish, if the vaccine fails and the fish get sick, there is little fall back on the company. This is same in people vaccination. Im happy to have a conversation about this but please dont twist my words.
Its simple. Get rid of the profit motive get rid of the problems.
"I think that people should be free to do their own research and make informed decisions for themselves"
What about the christian parents who watch their children die because they think doctors are evil?
As i said above, the problem is that people do not trust doctors or pharma anymore. I dont blame these christians that you are referring to ( and to be fair i dont think using christians is a good example - there are many different religious beliefs that restrict medical procedures or intervention). Absolutely getting rid of the profit side would be a good start, but in my opinion doctors and pharmacutical companies need to work really hard to repair their damaged reputations. Using neutral scientific researchers, rather than paid for would maybe give people more confidence. Aside from vaccines, a focus on other areas of health would bolster natural immunity. Healthy people are at a lower risk of getting sick in the first place - better, nutritious food; lower stress; eliminate chemicals in the sky/water/environment. Vaccination is one tool in the toolbox, but we rely on them nowadays to stop us getting sick because everything else around is so bad for us.
" but we rely on them nowadays to stop us getting sick because everything else around is so bad for us."
remember smallpox
Yes, and i acknowledged this earlier when i said that initially vaccines were made to do good. But now the smallpox example is used to push every other damn chemical that government or pharma want us to pump into our kids. Have you read anything about the chickenpox vaccine? This one is given to children to prevent a relatively mild infection, but can cause outbreaks of the more severe adult form in immunocompromised people due to the active pathogen in the vaccine. Is this an acceptable risk? I agree that there are certain pathogens that should be protexted against, but jagging your kid with every vaccine going just because the herd mentality says you should is actually less responsible. Btw dont know if youve seen some articles circulating today but bayer vaccines have been found with hiv virus in them - big pharma cannot be trusted!
"but jagging your kid with every vaccine going just because the herd mentality says you should is actually less responsible."
oh yeah sorry I do hope they get smallpox
"but can cause outbreaks of the more severe adult form in immunocompromised people due to the active pathogen in the vaccine" #1 herd immunity, thats the type of person who doesn't get it. #2 the majority of the time it is completely dead or disabled.
"This one is given to children to prevent a relatively mild infection"
you mean one that can kill?
here you might want to watch this lmao
I think that's the crux of the problem. Because on the one hand we're pro-freedom, right? But on the other hand, vaccination is a social responsibility. It's much like smoking, in the sense that you may tout your freedom to smoke, but your behavior will cause passive smokers to get sick.
You might be right, however where do you stop removing peoples freedom for the pursuit of social responsibility? You could say that anything we do as free humans could have an impact on the rest of society but do we take those freedoms away? For example, similar to your smoking one, people drink alcohol. Is it socially responsible to drink to excess causing trouble for other people, putting pressure on police and hospital resources? No, but we wouldnt take away that freedom. My concern is that in the course of protecting social responsibility the state is able to dictate every last thing in peoples lives for better or for worse. And we will only realise what freedom we had once the last bit of it is taken away. I do believe that vaccines are generally good, but they are made by insidious companies who sell for their own gains, recommended by doctors who gain a commission and there is no effort to give honest pro and con advice to people. To me the process of advising to vaccinate people is failing because they treat the average person like an idiot - just do it because i say its best for you. Just my thoughts though :)
Well we do, as in 'driving while intoxicated'.
But yeah I get your point, it's a tough balance to strike: freedom vs responsibility to others. I think with good education, people will naturally do what's socially responsible, so as a society we ought to put education first.
Getting your shots is well worth it! There will always be a small percentages of side effects but when you look at what could and will happen by diseases such as this spreads rampant the consequences are dire!
There cannot be enough pro-vaccination material - on steemit or anywhere.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but you threw the word "influenza" in there: do you think we should get seasonal vaccinations if we don't belong to a high-risk group? And is this country-specific? Where I live most people just suffer through it, at best they pop a cold pill to get a shot of caffeine and get through the day.