
The car is packed and you say your last goodbyes to your best friends. You are all going to different colleges and will not see each other for months. It is emotional, but your family says it is time to get on the road.  Finally, you pull up to a sign that says welcome to the University of South Carolina. Its exciting yet exhausting as you unpack the car and drag and rearrange furniture in your box of a bedroom. Your room is finally set up the way you want it to be. Everyone in your family starts crying as you say goodbye to each other. This is the last time you will see them in months. When you go back to the little room you will be living out of for the next year, the tears stop and you bond with your new roommate and talk about how awesome this year will be.

College is the time where you experience new things all on your own, but there are some people out there who cannot experience these awesome things. These people decided that vaccination was not for them and they were infected by a disease. This could have been prevented with just one simple, tiny shot. Vaccinations protect you from many diseases out there in the world and it takes seconds for it to prevent diseases from taking over your body for your lifetime. 

Vaccinations have been a debate since 1998 when Dr. Andrew Wakefield from England reported that vaccines were causing autism (Lillvis 476). Of course this sparked controversy and widespread panic to all vaccinated people. Even Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey protested against immunizations because they blamed vaccinations for causing their son to have autism. Since then, it has been proven that autism and vaccinations have no correlation. Dr. Wakefield made up his data about the relationship, but still non vaccinators are sticking to the statement (Mcleod 8). Also, many people are concerned that their child will develop other problems when vaccinated.  Studies have shown that vaccines "do carry real- but very rare-risks, ranging from rashes or tenderness at the site of injection to fever-associated seizures ...  and dangerous infections" (Kim), but the chances of getting the most extreme side effects are very, very small. The miniscule side effects have to do with how safely the vaccines are made, especially when pharmacists have to make thousands in a short amount of time. Alex Newman, the president of Liberty Sentinel Media, Inc. found that for the swine flu scare in 2009, in order "to cut time, corners are likely being cut: inoculations may start before the speedy trials are even over". The high demand for vaccinations makes the pharmacists cut down time on the trial period and skip right to the other steps in order to have high amounts of vaccinations. This causes the safety of the vaccine to be jeopardized because the trial period is where they figure out exactly what the vaccine does to the body. This is one of the main concerns of the anti-vaccination argument.

Another reason people are hesitant to vaccinate themselves or their loved ones is that they have never experienced any of the diseases that have been prevented from vaccinations (PBS). Maybe our parents or grandparents have experienced measles, mumps, polio, etc. It is not often in today's world, especially in America, that you know someone who has contracted polio or mumps. You may have heard of them, but the majority of the younger generation have not been exposed first hand to those diseases. They believe that there is no chance they can catch one of these diseases because no cases have been reported in years, but that is false. Corinne Mcleod from the University of Texas Health Science Center writes, "In 2013, there were 159 cases of measles in the United States, almost three times the typical yearly number of measles cases in the US" (8). This being said, there still are these types of disease out there. They can come from other countries and if you are not vaccinated the chances of you catching it are very strong. 

There are some other people who believe that if everyone else in the United States is vaccinated then they do not have to be. These people are called "free-riders" because they trust other people to be vaccinated in order to protect themselves from diseases (Hendrix 274). These people are like the one person in your group who does not do anything for the project, but ends up getting the A anyways. Unfortunately, this method only works is if almost everyone else gets vaccinated. If too many people choose to "free-ride" then the effect of the vaccines decreases and deadly diseases come back.

 Other people choose to not vaccinate because of personal beliefs and personal choice. Some religions people believe in and act as though getting attacked by diseases is part of God's plan (Klicka).  To them, vaccinating someone against this disease is interrupting or stopping the world's work.  Also, people believe that it is their choice to do what is best for themselves and for their loved ones. Most people want to take care of themselves first and for most instead of thinking what is for the greater good. People choose not to vaccinate because they believe in their mind that vaccinations have little advantages for their health.

It has also been shown that your political view could have something to do with your vaccination opinion. Individual rights and the freedom to choose whether or not you should be vaccinated is shown to be more on the libertarian's side (Sansom 177). While on the conservative side there is more of a push for the greater public and what is good for the whole public, not just the individual (Sansom 177). This shows that conservatives are more likely to prefer vaccination because it helps the greater good and liberals believe more in the individual self and could be both for or against the immunizations.

People who are pro-vaccination see immunizations as a protective force against deadly diseases. Vaccinations have wiped out as many as 16 diseases (PBS) and they significantly decreased the amount of people who are infected by these diseases. Immunizations increase your natural immunity to fight diseases (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease). How do they do this? Well most vaccines "contain a weakened form of the virus that doesn't cause disease or reproduce very well" (National Institute of Allergy and infectious Disease). This teaches the immune system to attack and destroy the foreign cells and it leaves them with the memory of the disease and makes the immune system stronger to attack if the actual disease does infect the body (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease). People who are not vaccinated are put at a disadvantage when infected with the pathogen. Their immune system is not as strong to attack the foreign cells. 

Vaccinations have also decreased the death rate of people who are infected with diseases. For example, before the vaccine for measles was developed there was about 530,000 cases and 440 deaths per a year and in 2006 the cases were decreased to 55 and there were no deaths reported (Bailey). This also is the case for diphtheria, decreasing from 1,800 deaths to none when the vaccine was developed. Also with whooping cough, polio and rubella which all dropped from thousands of deaths to zero in 2006 (Bailey). Vaccines have also increased the life span of people by 30 years (PBS). Immunizations have done a significant job decreasing the death and case rate of many diseases.

Now some of the anti-vaccinators out there are probably still thinking that there is a great risk that you will develop some permanent side effect from the vaccination. And the thought of that is yes, very scary. But should you not be scared of the consequences of being infected with all these different diseases more? You have a greater risk of contracting a virus than getting one of those side effects that come from vaccinations. So all in all, vaccinations protect you more than harm you. 

Not vaccinating can cause harm to the greater public. It is harmful to others not just physically but economically as well. When a person is infected with a pathogen, especially a deadly one, they will end up in the hospital and the hospital bills start to rack up. Honestly, this is not fair because those who usually end up in the hospital are those who can not yet be vaccinated, like infants and others with health issues. They cannot protect themselves from the diseases so unfortunately they have to face the consequences of coming in contact with a non vaccinated person with the disease.  They are paying for the hospital bills, which could have been avoided if the person they came in contact with was vaccinated. It is not fair that they have to suffer physically and economically because of non vaccinators.

In order to settle some common ground there should be a change in policy. A change where if you do not want to be vaccinated, you do not have to vaccinate yourself or you children if that is what you want, but you will need to pay a price. Every year you need to pay a fine for not vaccinating yourself. This fine will be a couple hundreds of dollars probably around one hundred dollars or so per a person that does not get vaccinated in your household. This fine will help hospitals get their supplies and education in treating people that become infected with diseases. It will also help people who cannot afford health insurance to pay for the vaccinations to get vaccinated. They money would help pay for those people to get vaccinated.  If you cannot pay the fine you have to get vaccinated. 

Some of you are thinking that the fine is very expensive especially for a large family. This fine is meant to help increase the vaccination rate and also help those who are infected with deadly disease from non vaccinators get better. Right now you probably or your parents, pay for health insurance that covers the cost of vaccines. The health insurance helps you avoid the fine by allowing you to get vaccinated so you do not have to pay the extra money. People who believe they should not be vaccinated because of religious reasons, can still be unvaccinated as long as they pay the fee. Same thing goes for those who do not want to vaccinate because of personal reasons. This will help increase the vaccination rate because those who cannot afford to pay the fine will be vaccinated. Also, the fee may become a nuisance to some people to pay and they might give in and vaccinate. This fee is a compromise between both sides that will be better for the greater good.

All in all, people have different views on many different things including vaccines. Honestly from each side I can see exactly why someone chooses to be pro-vaccination or anti-vaccination. But when choosing a side, I ask you to look at it from all angles. Look at the consequences of each side. Choose whether you find the rare side effects of vaccines more or less of a risk compared to all the deadly diseases out there. 

