Being nearly forty years of age, I have lived through a very steady age of vaccination. As I grew up, I was given a large number of vaccinations that were required to attend public school. There were a few sicknesses out there that vaccines didn't touch yet, such as chickenpox (varicella). I was fearful of getting chickenpox, but I never managed to catch the virus.
Vaccination meant immunity to me. You got the shots and you never had to worry about getting the disease. As 2021 is coming to a close, I am finally understanding that this isn't the case. A vaccination is sort of like getting a bulletproof vest. If you go into a firefight wearing one, your chances of catching a stray bullet to your body are reduced. But they don't go away.
Public education has tried over and over again to show the importance of vaccines. They are very correct in doing so. While a single individual being vaccinated helps the individual, the individual gains greater protection by also having everyone around them protected. This is why vaccines in the United States have felt like they grant immunity. As public schools require them, the majority of people my age in 2021 are fully vaccinated against a large number of diseases.
The measles vaccine in the United States is a great case study. From 1938 to 1958, the number of people infected with the measles virus fluctuated year to year. With peaks of over 800,000 citizens before 1940 (133M people in the US then compared to 330M in 2020), the measles was infecting a lot of people. In 1963, vaccines were licensed for use and in 1968 the reported cases dropped below 100,000 for the first time in over 30 years, and have stayed there. Through 1988 about 60% of the population was covered. In the late 1990s, this increased to above 90%.
Since 1989, people have felt safe from measles in the US. Cases have been very low, with as little as 13 cases reported in 2020. This followed a decade high of 1,282 cases in 2019.
The recent anti-vaccination movement that has been helped by the existence of the Internet has started to peel back on that feeling of immunity. The internet allows individuals who don't want to take the chance of getting a vaccine to push their ideas to the general public. With the ability for stories to become viral (oh the irony), they can get spread to a large group of people quickly. Those who don't want to be vaccinated can upvote or reshare these stories, much like a virus makes copies of itself using your own cells to reproduce.
The stories can also introduce fiction into a land of facts. Billionaires sneaking microchips into your bloodstream, vaccines themselves somehow changing your DNA, vaccines inhibiting your ability to reproduce, and incorrect numbers on mishaps or other failures. The opposition does this as well, with the pro-vaccine crowd putting a magnifying glass on anti-vaccine deaths, showcasing their social media posts that are resharing the fiction before they eventually catch Covid-19 and pass away.
There are legitimate stories of people becoming ill while getting vaccinated. There are two instances in my social circle where people have gotten the vaccine and odd things have happened. Surprisingly enough, they both still supported the vaccine afterward. It is always safer by simple mathematics getting a vaccine vs getting the disease itself. There will forever be fringe cases where the opposite is true, but these are extremely rare and are also studied and scientists attempt to fix these things.
The Covid-19 vaccine has been polarizing because people are afraid of becoming ill from getting it. Another large group just doesn't like being told what they must do. This is a completely understandable human behavior, that is why we like to highlight the US as the land of the free. But nobody is completely free who lives in a structured society. We still must wear our seatbelts, or send our children to public school. But there are alternatives, such as paying a fine (limited with points in some states), or paying for private schooling.
Some would rather have a chance to get the disease than take a chance of getting the shot. This makes sense in logic, as getting the shot means you 100% have to take the chance vs attempting to dodge the disease. The numbers don't lie, however. The chance of death from the disease has consistently been greater than the chance of death from getting vaccinated. It's worth noting that the chance of death from the disease has decreased as the treatments have improved.
This is of course if you consider each variant its own disease. The more contagious delta variant has become the dominant strain. And you don't become the dominant strain by being less effective at spreading. While I can't cite the numbers, I would imagine the chances of death with the delta variant are at least a bit increased over the original.
So this whole discussion comes down to two things.
One, a vaccine is not and has never been immunity to a disease. You can still get any disease you are vaccinated against.
Two, vaccines work better as a higher percentage of a population gets them.
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