Impact of Vaccination Refusal: A Study on H1N1 Epidemic

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Luckovich’s editorial cartoon on H1N1 was published in October of 2009 and the cartoon is in Luckovich’s classic scribble sketch style. His cartoon alludes to H1N1 and the vaccine scares that caused avoidable sickness and death. Luckovich was in favor of vaccinations and he shows in his editorial why they are important. He directed his editorial cartoon specifically towards parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids due to rumors or lifestyle choices. His cartoon’s overall point is if you don’t vaccinate your children they will get sick and die from a preventable disease. The editorial was published after a major outbreak of a devastating strain of H1N1 that killed and hospitalized many, it spread quickly because of people who refused to vaccinate …show more content…

In the first panel it shows the woman looking down at something and she says, “ Sweetie, no way I’d let you get the swine flu shot. Not my child. Suspicious of its safety…” The second panel is a zoomed out version of the first one and shows the same woman again, but this time look down saying, “I’ll visit tomorrow…” to a tombstone with H1N1 victim engraved on it. Looking at these panels, one can assume her child has recently died from the swine flu that devastated the United States in 2009. The child died because it wasn’t vaccinated against the disease and was susceptible. We know the child wasn’t vaccinated because the woman said there was no way she’d let her child get the vaccine because she was suspicious of its safety even though it could have saved her child’s life. We also know that the child died of H1N1, the swine flu, because that is what it said on the child’s …show more content…

The woman says she is suspicious of the vaccines safety. Guillain-Barré Syndrome is very rare and only happens in one in a million cases. It can also happen if you contract the stomach flu. This disease isn’t deadly and a few months slightly paralyzed over death sounds fair, but people still decided it was better to catch the flu and take a chance on death, that’s what the mother in the comic did. I’m guessing the child was fairly young about one to nine years of age because the swine flu 2009 strain was very severe for this age group. Adults have a stronger immune system and have been exposed to more sicknesses than young children, so for adults the flu wasn’t too bad for them and probably thought that it wouldn’t be as severe for their child, but a young child’s immune system would be overwhelmed by the disease and cause a more severe

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