Mandatory Vaccinations Research

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Human beings have benefitted from vaccinations for more than two hundred years. However, this pathway to finding the most effective vaccines has been neither orderly nor immediate. The idea of mandatory vaccines has been highly controversial for many years. This controversy plays a key role when students head off to college and vaccines are mandatory. Based upon religious beliefs, some students have been able to receive a waiver for these vaccines. But, if they’re mandatory vaccines, why can some students receive waivers while others cannot? Famous, well-known personal such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have intervened with this controversy, adding their own viewpoints on the topic. The first observation of a vaccine occurred in 429 BC when Greek …show more content…

Vaccinated mothers can help protect their unborn children from viruses that can cause birth defects once the child is born. In addition, vaccinated communities can help to eliminate diseases for future generations, increasing the well-being of the human population. A common misconception about vaccines is that they cause immense financial problems for the individual receiving the vaccine. While vaccines are expensive, most insurance companies will cover the cost of the vaccination, and may only require a very small copay of five or ten dollars. When compared to the total price, vaccines cost less time and money to be given than to treat infectious diseases, which cost parents time off of work to care for a sick child, potential long-term disability care, and medical costs. For example, children under the age of five who contract the flu are contagious for roughly eight days, and, according to a 2012 CDC study, cost their parents an average of 11 to 73 hours of wages, adding up to a $222 to $1,456 loss in pay, as well as an additional $300 to $4,000 in medical expenses (Should any vaccines be required for children?) A vaccine-primed immune system can prevent a disease before it starts, making a person contagious for a much shorter period of time, or perhaps they will not be contagious at all. Likewise, when other people are vaccinated, they are less likely to transfer a disease to others. Vaccines protect not only individual people but entire communities as well. In the 21st century, children are no longer vaccinated against smallpox since the disease no longer exists due to vaccination, the last incidence of smallpox occurred in 1948, proving that if a large number of people within a community are vaccinated against a certain disease, the entire group of people becomes less vulnerable to contract that disease. This type of protection is known as

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