Why are vaccines important to society?

Carlos Whitmer, Staff Writer

Vaccines are one of the greatest inventions that we still use today. They were first used in 1796 by Edward Jenner. He used a small amount of the weakened cowpox virus to immunize the boy to the full strength virus. Every since then there has been a huge boom in vaccine technology. They are now more affordable, easier to make, and they also protect you from many other illnesses other than cowpox. Big diseases like smallpox and polio are now almost completely nonexistent because of the mass production and spread of vaccines. Vaccines are for people of all ages, old to young. They even help babies from early preventable diseases that can hurt them severely.

Vaccines work in a very interesting way. They help you build immunity to virus by introducing you to a weakened form of that specific virus. This small amount of damaged virus can no longer harm you, but the body still sees it as an intruder, so it develops antibodies to fight it and it remembers how to make those antibodies if it needs them again. When the real virus appears, the body is already ready with the production of antibodies to take it out before it gets too strong.

There are some misconceptions about the symptoms that vaccines can cause. Some people that vaccines can cause the disease that they contain, but this is not true. The virus there is extremely weak and can barely perform its basic functions. It just needs to be in the body so that the antibodies can be produced to fight it. There are also some people that believe that vaccines are meant to make you sick that you can go to the doctor to spend more money and that vaccines kill people. This is also not true, there are a lot of independent studies made that all show that vaccines are safe to use and that they really do help people.