Externalities Of Vaccination

Externalities are the costs or benefits of good or services that affect another person, or a third party, who did not freely choose to receive the cost or benefit of the activity. There are both positive and negative externalities; the negative externalities are the costs of the activity, and the positive externalities are the benefits the third party receives from an activity being carried out. Vaccinations are a prime example of an externality, which is the injection of a killed or weakened virus that can help your body produce immunity against the virus in the future. Within the market for vaccinations, anyone who wants to avoid getting a certain illness are the buyers for vaccinations. More specifically, one might see a parents who want to protect their children from getting the virus being the buyer's. For sellers, there are many barriers to entry, including fixed costs and patents, that exist in the market for vaccines, which limits the amount of suppliers that exist in the market to only pharmaceuticals that have the ability to produce and sell vaccines. Fixed cost such as how expensive it is to produce vaccines due to the extensive research and development that must go into

The third party, or those who do not get vaccinated, will always be the receivers of the external positive benefit from you receiving the vaccination and reducing your susceptibility of the disease. Vaccinations in general have helped to nearly eliminate some of the most serious diseases seen in history of humankind, and the act of getting vaccinated helps save lives by preventing outbreaks and protecting others who may not be able to get vaccinated for whatever