Many of us have a variety of things we are very passionate about: mine is vaccinations. I am a firm believer that vaccinating our children is a MUST. If you look back in history when many diseases were present such as, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, and many more, people were begging and praying for a cure, for a way for all of this to go away.
And then it happened.
Over a period of time since 1796 when the smallpox vaccine was developed, we have been developing vaccines to prevent these terrible diseases. The MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine was combined into a three-in-one vaccine in 1971. It has been 45 years since this revolutionary vaccine has been available, and not even half a century later, people have turned against this life saving concept.
Studies show that measles and rubella have an effective rate of 99.99% while mumps has an effective rate of 85%-88%. In other words, even if you are vaccinated with MMR, you still have a chance of getting mumps. That chance is minimal, but the only way for those who are vaccinated to get mumps or measles or rubella, is for an unvaccinated person to bring the disease into the country. A vaccinated person cannot just contract mumps independently. There has to be a source from the outside that brings it in.
When my hometown released that mumps had been confirmed in their high school and one of their middle schools, I became very upset with how we have gotten to this point. Vaccinating is extremely important to keep our society, and more importantly our youth healthy. Some people, including myself, cannot be vaccinated due to auto-immune diseases. The only way to keep these people healthy and out of harms way is to practice the herd immunity, which is possible if everyone who is healthy and able gets their vaccines.
It baffles me that the anti-vacc's would put not only their children at risk, but other people's children at risk, especially someone's child who cannot physically have the vaccines due to diseases such as: cancer, cystic fibrosis, and diabetes. They argue that they "want the best" for their children, but wouldn't wanting your child to be safe from deadly diseases be in there best interest? There have been a handful of articles that have no research to back them up and or are just a load of false information that have sparked these people (the anti-vacc's) to not allow their children the healthiest and safest life style.
I cannot express how important it is to vaccinate our children. If we put ourselves back 45+ years ago when the world was ruled by disease, would we be causing a controversy over not vaccinating our children or would we be begging for some sort of cure to save our children from the agonizing pain and or death caused by these diseases.
