Pros And Cons Of Vaccination

Involuntary Injections Imperative to Immunity Infectious disease has been a critical health concern since society moved to agrarian tactics in which humans often interact with domesticated animals on farms. An epidemic forms when enough individuals in a given community contract the disease. When the disease begins to spread across a range of communities, it becomes a pandemic (Link). These pandemics have become disastrous tragedies in the past that wiped out millions of innocent civilians. A prime example of a devastating pandemic is the Bubonic Plague during the 1300s in which over twenty-five million people died horribly during five years due to the widespread pathogen in Europe (Cunningham 7). Advanced medical research created vaccinations

Herd immunity is an important concept to understand why vaccinations are critical to maintaining optimal health in societies. The phenomenon uses the logic that if most of a population is resistant to the infection, then the infection such as polio will die out because it cannot find a new host to infect before that specific strain dies, eventually eliminating the disease (Paul 16). Another assisting technique to combat polio and other diseases has been ring vaccination, in which when any case of the infectious disease reveals itself, every individual that comes in contact with the infected person is immediately vaccinated. “Mass vaccination has already eliminated the disease from the Western Hemisphere, the last naturally transmitted case occurring in Peru in 1991” (Paul 19). This evidence fully supports the theory behind herd immunity, because after the World Health Organization launched its campaign to eradicate polio in the Western Hemisphere with herd immunity vaccination, the disease disappeared. Since the disease is still prevalent in the Eastern Hemisphere in countries such as Somalia and Nigeria, the evidence proves that the eradication was not coincidental, but rather a direct result of the mass vaccinations of the people of the Western Hemisphere. In order to carry out an effective herd immunization plan such as this one, it must be mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children as directed by their