Are vaccines working? Are they preventing the spread of infections?

 cfbrooks posted over a year ago
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ThePrincesTale said:
Lol, my favourite topic, considering I spend half my 일 at uni doing a degree in biomedical science and the other half arguing against anti-vaxxers on 페이스북 xD Thanks for asking.

Before I start, let me state that this isn't a debate, it's scientific fact. Rather than valid arguments for both sides, it consists of misinformation, debunked research, and wild conspiracy theories vs. tens of thousands of reports, studies and clinical evidence, spanning centuries, 의해 hundreds and hundreds of health experts (aka scientific consensus). Now let me make a couple of points:

1. Vaccines work
This is basic biology. The pathogen gets introduced to the body (in an attenuated form to ensure that no disease symptoms actually result) and the immune system learns how to produce antibodies against it, so that when 다음 exposed to that pathogen, it can easily produce the correct antibodies and defeat it before any harm is done. This is the (grossly simplified) reason why vaccines produce immunity, and it is indisputable. The Chinese knew about the concept of immunity all the way back in 1000 AD and practiced inoculation, which was essentially a primitive form of vaccination. To deny that vaccines grant immunity is to deny the most basic tenet of immunology and pretty much puts 당신 in the ilk of flat-earthers as far as science is concerned.

2. Vaccines prevent the spread of infection
See the infographic below, it speaks for itself. Disease cases plummeted as soon as a vaccine for each respective disease was released. There has been a 99% reduction in rubella cases in the US from the pre-vaccine era, diphtheria and polio have literally vanished there, and smallpox has been completely and utterly eradicated from the entire world due a global WHO vaccine effort. A recent study made a conservative estimate that vaccines have prevented 103 million cases of disease since 1924. It's literally one of the greatest human achievements in history.

Of course, it's readily acknowledged that a vaccine won't produce immunity in an individual 100% of the time. For example, the efficacy of the MMR vaccine is 97%, meaning that if 100 children are vaccinating, 3 will remain non-immune. This is where the concept of herd immunity comes into things. If we have a certain threshold of the population vaccinated, the entire population will be protected. This is due to the large amount of immune individuals minimising the spread of disease and effectively preventing even non-immune individuals from getting it. Because there are so few susceptible people left, any infected person will likely not infect anyone else, and they will be cured (or die) before passing on the infection. This means the disease prevalence will become lower and lower before eventually dying out all together. It is what resulted in the near-eradication of measles in the 1990s. Unfortunately, now that some people have forgotten the devastating impacts
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 Lol, my favourite topic, considering I spend half my 일 at uni doing a degree in biomedical science and the other half arguing against anti-vaxxers on 페이스북 xD Thanks for asking. Before I start, let me state that this isn't a debate, it's scientific fact. Rather than valid arguments for both sides, it consists of misinformation, debunked research, and wild conspiracy theories vs. tens of thousands of reports, studies and clinical evidence, spanning centuries, 의해 hundreds and hundreds of health experts (aka scientific consensus). Now let me make a couple of points: [b] 1. Vaccines work [/b] This is basic biology. The pathogen gets introduced to the body (in an attenuated form to ensure that no disease symptoms actually result) and the immune system learns how to produce antibodies against it, so that when 다음 exposed to that pathogen, it can easily produce the correct antibodies and defeat it before any harm is done. This is the (grossly simplified) reason why vaccines produce immunity, and it is indisputable. The Chinese knew about the concept of immunity all the way back in 1000 AD and practiced inoculation, which was essentially a primitive form of vaccination. To deny that vaccines grant immunity is to deny the most basic tenet of immunology and pretty much puts 당신 in the ilk of flat-earthers as far as science is concerned. [b] 2. Vaccines prevent the spread of infection [/b] See the infographic below, it speaks for itself. Disease cases plummeted as soon as a vaccine for each respective disease was released. There has been a 99% reduction in rubella cases in the US from the pre-vaccine era, diphtheria and polio have literally vanished there, and smallpox has been completely and utterly eradicated from the [i] entire world [/i] due a global WHO vaccine effort. A recent study made a conservative estimate that vaccines have prevented 103 [i] million [/i] cases of disease since 1924. It's literally one of the greatest human achievements in history. Of course, it's readily acknowledged that a vaccine won't produce immunity in an individual 100% of the time. For example, the efficacy of the MMR vaccine is 97%, meaning that if 100 children are vaccinating, 3 will remain non-immune. This is where the concept of herd immunity comes into things. If we have a certain threshold of the population vaccinated, the entire population will be protected. This is due to the large amount of immune individuals minimising the spread of disease and effectively preventing even non-immune individuals from getting it. Because there are so few susceptible people left, any infected person will likely not infect anyone else, and they will be cured (or die) before passing on the infection. This means the disease prevalence will become lower and lower before eventually dying out all together. It is what resulted in the near-eradication of measles in the 1990s. Unfortunately, now that some people have forgotten the devastating impacts
posted over a year ago 
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of childhood illness and refuse to vaccinate, measles has come roaring back with a vengeance. In regions with low vaccination coverage, such as California, it is now at endemic proportions. Once again, shows that vaccines directly prevent disease spread.
ThePrincesTale posted over a year ago
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[b] 3. Vaccines do not have toxic effects [/b] A favourite argument against vaccines is that they contain toxic, scary-sounding chemicals such as mercury, formaldehyde, and sodium. Here, anti-vaxxers do two things to 구름, 클라우드 the science. Firstly, they ignore how basic chemistry works. While metals like mercury and sodium can be dangerous in pure forms, in vaccines they are used in their compound form, similar to how they come in everyday life. Sodium in its pure form is a violently explosive metal, while as sodium chloride it is used as 표, 테이블 salt. The mercury we know as dangerous is the methylmercury form, found in soil and deep-water fish, while the mercury compound in some adult vaccines is thimerosal, which breaks down to ETHYLmercury in the body. This does not bioaccumulate and is easily excreted within hours. (In any case, no mercury compound has been present in any childhood vaccines since the 90s, so they also blatantly lie). The 초 fact that anti-vaxxers ignore is the basic biochemical principle that toxicity depends on dose. Too much of even the most innocuous substance, such as water, can lead to death, while even for very toxic substances such as snake venom, there is a dose below which there is no detectable toxic effect. This is why, while formaldehyde can be toxic in large quantities, it is completely 안전한, 안전 in the amount introduced 의해 a vaccine. 당신 literally get 더 많이 formaldehyde 의해 eating a pear.
ThePrincesTale posted over a year ago
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[b] Vaccines do not cause autism [/b] A thoroughly debunked theory and one found to be generated 의해 fraud in the first place. A recent study 의해 the 대학 of Sydney of 1.25 [i] million [/i] children found absolutely no link between autism and vaccination status. While scientists still don’t know the exact causes of autism, they are looking like mad and one thing we can be extremely confident of is that it’s not vaccines.
ThePrincesTale posted over a year ago
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Whew, sorry for the essay, LOL 팬팝 wouldn't let me post it all at once. 당신 got me on a science-rave xD
ThePrincesTale posted over a year ago
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