Vaccinations have proven to be an extremely successful and innovative medical invention that have helped millions. However, their success and importance is recently being challenged by the new phenomenon referred to as vaccine hesitancy. According the World Health Organization, “Vaccine hesitancy refers to delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccination services. Vaccine hesitancy is complex and context specific varying across time, place and vaccines. It includes factors such as complacency, convenience and confidence”(Center For Disease Control and Prevention 1). These factors mean that people are choosing to avoid vaccines because they lack confidence in both them and the people administering them, it is inconvenient to deal with the vaccine process and doctors appointments associated with them, and a general feeling that they are just not necessary. This issue has been sweeping the entire world due to many parents’ new found fear of vaccines. Even though vaccine hesitancy is so prevalent now, it is completely unnecessary for parents to be refusing vaccines. This hesitancy is poorly affecting the worlds health and all of the progress we have made medically. In order to fully understand the importance of vaccinations one must know why people are hesitant about them, the effect that it will have on the world, and what needs to be done to combat this hesitancy. If we let vaccine hesitancy encompass too many parent’s minds, our entire country’s health may be in danger. While knowing the possibility of this it is difficult to understand how some parents could continue to be vaccine hesitant, yet parents still seem to be unaware of the dangers of living without vaccines.

The first issue that needs to be discussed is where this major vaccine hesitancy started and why we believe it exists. According to Tara Haelle, who is a writer and educator in the science field that writes towards health concerns parents may have, even one of our own founding fathers Ben Franklin was vaccine hesitant. When presented with the issue of vaccinating his son with the new small pox vaccine he was unsure if it was the right decision to vaccinate or not. After choosing not to however, he regretted his decision after losing his son to small pox (Haelle 1:32-1:52). So, this phenomenon spans back over three hundred years. But the question is then, why is it so prevalent at this time? It is because of how long it has been since the world has been affected by dangerous vaccine preventable diseases like small pox, polio, and the measles. Vaccines for all of these diseases were developed in a completely different generation, there hasn’t been a severe outbreak in decades. According to Parents of Young Children are More vaccine hesitant, “There are some differences in views about vaccines by generation. Adults younger than 30 are less inclined than older age groups to think the benefits of the MMR vaccine outweigh the risks”(Funk 5). The reason that they are less inclined to think the benefits outweigh the risks is because they have not seen the disease and how it can affect people. Many members of the older generation in our country have actually seen people die from polio or one of the MMR diseases, and that is why they understand the risks of not being vaccinated. The only reason that young parents really are so hesitant of vaccines is because they have not fully experienced what it could be like without them. It was stated that “The public health success of vaccination has meant that new generations of parents have no direct experience of the risks of many vaccine-preventable diseases and their concerns are now concentrated on the safety and effectiveness of the individual vaccines themselves” (Dube 2). Simply put, young people have not been exposed to the dangers of certain diseases because of the fact that vaccines have been so successful and powerful. So, since they are not fully aware of the dangers associated with these diseases they have begun to target individual vaccines and claim they are unsafe. For this reason these types of parents have developed a set of reasons as to why they do not trust vaccines, none of which are truly justified by scientific proof or reasoning. 

When asked about why they have chosen to delay or refuse certain vaccines for their children, parents have come up with a multitude of reasons for this action. These reasons include anything from not seeing a reason for vaccines, not understanding their importance, or not even believing they are safe. Many parents refuse vaccines simply because they do not believe that they are necessary, which as shown previously is because they haven’t seen the effects of a lack of vaccinations. This decline in vaccinations is “associated with lower perceived risk of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease, [and] lower perceived importance of vaccine preventable diseases as a health concern” (Salmon 9). So, parents are not vaccinating their children because they believe that these vaccine preventable disease are no longer a severe health concern. By saying this they are failing to realize that the only reason these types of diseases are no longer an issue is because of the creation and use of vaccines to prevent them. It was also shown that “A recent study found that 8% of parents believed it was better for the child to get the disease naturally rather than receive an immunization for protection”. Parents are starting to believe that they should take a “natural approach” and have their child get a disease like measles or rubella, instead of being vaccinated and protected from it (Barrows 12). Parents actually believe that this may be a safer approach to dealing with disease because the vaccine could be unsafe for their child. They do not believe that vaccines are truly as safe and important as they are broadcasted to be. This can further be associated with the newfound distrust for both the government and medical staff. 

Another one of the biggest reasons parents have for not vaccinating their children is due to a mistrust of the government and medical organizations. Since the appearance of the article claiming that vaccines are linked to autism, parents have been tending to be skeptical about if the government is being completely truthful with them about the safety and necessity of vaccines. “Another study indicated just 44% of Americans disagreed with the statement that “doctors and the government still want to vaccinate children even though they know these vaccines cause autism and other psychological disorders”” (Rodriguez 2). Less than half of the population believes that the government would not administer vaccines that cause autism or other psychological issues. This shows a large lack of trust between the American population and their government. The fact that parents believe that the government would lie to them about the safety of vaccines leads them to do different research, online research. In doing so these parents wind up finding a variety of information, some of which can be horribly false and misleading. According to Mary Healy, a professor of pediatrics in infectious disease, “The media and ease of anonymity online make reporting anti-vaccine arguments easy regardless of the strength of the evidence that vaccines are safe and effective. Many of these articles and social media posts exploit parents’ worse fears” (Healy 4). People will post articles that have no scientific fact to support them that discuss horror stories about vaccines that may not even have an ounce of truth behind them. These stories just make parents instantly have insane amounts of reluctance towards vaccinations and doctors’ advice in general. This results in parents believing the opinions of other parents instead of the strongly backed up medical opinions provided by doctors, which is a serious pressing issue. All of this mistrust in the medical community is leading to a society where the idea of herd immunity is being threatened. 

Herd immunity is the idea that when a majority of the population has become immune to a disease through vaccinations, the whole population will benefit and the disease can be completely eradicated from the population. This is something that had been established in the United States and prevented any reoccurring outbreaks of diseases like polio, measles, and small pox. Unfortunately, since vaccine hesitancy has become so prevalent there has been an extreme threat to herd immunity. There have been outbreaks of diseases that had since now been eradicated in America for multiple decades. “In the year 2014, there were 644 cases of measles in the United States (CDC, 2015a). These outbreaks of measles are being seen in clusters of unimmunized individuals throughout the country and represent the highest number of cases seen since measles was documented as eliminated within the United States in 2000” (Barrows 6). This is due to the vaccine hesitant population refusing vaccines that they deem unsafe for their children. Because of this population of people six hundred and forty-four people contracted a disease that was otherwise supposedly eliminated in the United States. They caused this disease to come back after being dormant for years. This is something that impacted the rest of the population, and this population was working hard to try to successfully combat these awful diseases. It is not right that these peoples’ opinions can result in a disease coming back just because they decided they do not want to follow the rules of mandatory vaccination. It cannot be argued as justified because it is “especially important for children who are unable to get vaccines because of medical reasons or those too young for certain vaccines and rely on the vaccination of others to be protected” (5). What this means is that since these young children cannot yet be vaccinated, they need to be certain that the whole population is immune and the disease has been eradicated. If this isn’t the case then the chance of the child catching the disease, and potentially dying increases significantly. This puts this child in unnecessary danger, which is something that cannot be avoided any other way than through herd immunity. We shouldn’t live in a country where we can completely rid ourselves of a disease, but yet it still comes back because of a lack of herd immunity. It is scary that we have made so much progress medically but we are now experiencing a decline. It is now time that we combat this issue before it is too late, and to do this we must turn to the medical community itself. 

Unfortunately, it falls upon the responsibility of doctors to try to combat and resolve the vaccine hesitancy revolution. They are the ones that have to administer the vaccines and they are the only ones with strong enough medical backgrounds to provide solid evidence to support vaccinations. There have luckily been many articles, like one written by doctor John Merrill-Steskal, published trying to offer advice and some type of a guideline for doctors to use when addressing patients. They must remain calm and be extremely respectful so that they do not run the risk of further alienating a parent from accepting vaccinations. It is so difficult to properly address parents though because most of them already have their minds made up completely about vaccines in general. “Every day patients acquire information, discuss concerns, and formulate opinions within the realm of social media.  By the time a patient enters the exam room, their mind may already be made up about vaccines” (Merrill-Steskal 5). In this time period it is difficult to prevent parents from finding false and misleading information online. Anyone can post anything online whether there is truth behind it or not. So, parents are blindly following the information they read in online blogs and posts, instead of trusting the more reliable information provided to them by their child’s physician. A suggestion made by doctor John Merrill-Steskal was that physicians need to get involved with the online blogs and other social media forums where parents are asking questions and discussing issues they may have with some medical practices. This is the only way to actually delve into the world where vaccine hesitancy is starting and put a stop to it before it changes someone’s opinion on vaccines completely (Merril-Steskal). Unfortunately, some parents who post online do actually have fair reasons to refuse vaccinations, which is what is causing this epidemic. 

Even though we want them to be, not all medical procedures can be one hundred percent fool proof. So, even though most people do not experience major side effects after getting a vaccine, some children will. While the typical vaccine side effects will be mild and only be a sore arm and a miniscule fever which both go away in a few days, some can be much more severe and last for an extended period of time. For one of the nationally required vaccines, the MMRV vaccine, there is a one out of twenty chance that the child will get a rash. While this isn’t quite severe it is still something that is off putting to parents. An even rarer side effect, but one that will still frighten parents is that one in 1,250 children could experience seizures caused by their fever, or low platelet counts which can result in a blood disease. Again, while that is very uncommon the thought of one of those things happening to your own child because of the decision you made to vaccinate them is extremely frightening and unpleasant. Finally, some of the most rare side effects could be as severe as deafness, long term seizures, coma, or permanent brain damage. While the chance of getting these is almost impossible, the sight of a list of side effects like these would obviously cause a parent to question if the chances are really worth it, that is an understanding reaction. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention 12) All parents want is to do the best thing they can for their child, the issue with this pertaining to something like vaccines is that you can never be sure if your child will fall victim to the side effects. Sadly, the only way to know what the reaction will be is to get the vaccine and wait and see. Thankfully though, the extremely severe reactions are very rare so there should not be too much to worry about. Parents should still make the right choice by deciding to vaccinate their children despite the potential side effects. 

Vaccines are a medical advancement that have helped to fully eradicate awful diseases like polio, measles, small pox, and rubella from the United States and most of the developed world. The thought of any of these diseases resurfacing is an idea that the medical population is extremely scared of, and is in turn doing whatever they can to combat this possibility. However, these diseases have been resurfacing in areas with high vaccine hesitancy and parents who are choosing to opt out of required vaccinations. This is a phenomenon that must be stopped. If herd immunity continues to be threatened like this we may reach a point where vaccinations are barely effective anymore, and that would simply be a waste of an amazing medical discovery. People are just not aware of the severity of these diseases since they have not had to live in a time period where those were the diseases killing off all of their friends and relatives. What we have to make them realize is that if there is a way to stop a dangerous disease from destroying people’s lives then we should do everything in our power to try. Think about all of the incurable diseases we still have to deal with. Illnesses like Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and even cancer. If there was a vaccine to completely eradicate horrible painful diseases like these, would people really question it and refuse to get the vaccine? I doubt it, and that is because they have seen the pain and horrible suffering victims and their families are faced with. The similar pain that was felt by victims of polio and small pox, before the discovery of vaccines. So, unless we want to bring back this awful suffering and pain, potentially losing lives in the process, we need to work together to combat vaccine hesitancy and maintain our previously established herd immunity.
