Have you been vaccinated? Whether or not to vaccinate a child has been an enormous controversy for years now and has only become a larger and more important matter.

In my personal opinion, it is extremely necessary to be vaccinated and it is the job of both of your parents to vaccinate you and/or your siblings. Being vaccinated could be the difference between life and death. Without vaccinations transferring weakened versions of diseases, the body would not be able to recognize the new disease and would not know how to fight it. Those without vaccinations who catch a disease have a much better better chance of dying (or even catching the disease in the first place) compared to someone who is vaccinated. A common idea is that vaccines give children autism, which is completely untrue. It has been scientifically proven that vaccines and autism are not linked whatsoever, yet people still tend to believe this lie against scientific proof.

Without vaccines, many more lives would be constantly lost. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, parents began to fear the safety of the whooping cough vaccine so they stopped vaccinating their children. Even though the parents thought it was a good idea at the time, it definitely wasn’t. The plan backfired completely and ended up causing three epidemics and the deaths of over 100 children who caught the disease. In Russia, during the break-up of the Soviet Union, people stopped being vaccinated which ended up causing a massive epidemic of diphtheria. This helps prove that vaccines help people more than actually hurting them. Even if a vaccine doesn’t seem safe, it is most likely safer than catching the disease for which you should be vaccinated.                Another reason children are not vaccinated is that parents are too ignorant and have a negative attitude towards science. However, this can be understandable considering the lack of trust in scientists. Parents who do not vaccinate their children are also called conspiracy theorists. This ideal comes from the false statements some scientists declared to be true. Not only is it the lack of trust in scientists, but the lack of trust with the manufacturers and sponsors who create these vaccines. Normal citizens who don’t understand science nearly as much as the scientists depend upon them for information unfamiliar to them. It makes sense that these parents would be upset and lose trust in the people they depended upon so much.            There were also said to be accounts of vaccination injury and accusations that the vaccines were not as effective as doctors say. Parents have blamed sickness and injuries of their children on vaccines. However, I believe none of this is true. According to studies on the website vaccines.gov,  vaccines are successful from 90 to 100% of the time and have been the reason for a better chance of survival rather than causing harm. Some exceptions, however, could be that a child is allergic to the ingredients of the vaccine, which that is neither the fault of the child or parent. Another common excuse for not being vaccinated is religion. Now religion is not a bad thing, and I have nothing against it, however, I highly disagree that your faith should come before your health. Your beliefs should not be the reason you get sick and possibly end your life. What the decision comes down to is your beliefs or death. In my opinion, I’d rather live thanks to accurate science than choose my religion. 

It’s up to the family to decide on vaccines, but it’s not okay for the rest of us to be endangered because of someone else’s decision. Which is exactly what happened in Disneyland, California this year. There was an outbreak in Disneyland and were forty-two cases of measles confirmed. The sick patients were six babies too young to even be vaccinated, one partially vaccinated victim, and one fully vaccinated patient. The twenty-eight who caught the measles were unvaccinated! It is not fair to risk the lives of those who were just having fun because of those who weren’t even vaccinated. This also proves that someone not vaccinated is much more likely to catch the disease, and vaccines are very effective.

I still respect the decisions of those parents who are against vaccines, even if I don’t agree with them. If someone strongly supports his religion or rumors of vaccines that are most likely not even true, then that’s fine. Then that person will face the consequences of not being vaccinated and will risk his own life. But please, I am vaccinated and healthy and I, and other people, would like to stay that way. So we would appreciate not endangering our health because of other students who aren’t vaccinated. Those who are vaccinated shouldn’t have to suffer because of someone else’s decision.