If someone at the U were to come down with a case of smallpox, imagine the chaos that would ensue. It would spread incredibly rapidly. Classes would be canceled and the dorms would be evacuated. It would sweep Salt Lake City, resulting in quarantines and mass panic. But the worst part? Thirty percent of people who contracted that smallpox virus would die.
Fortunately, thanks to worldwide vaccination campaigns, we will never have to worry about an outbreak of smallpox. The last case of smallpox was in 1978. It now officially exists in only two highly secure facilities: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the Vector Institute in Russia.
Unfortunately, misinformation about vaccines is running wild, and a few infectious diseases, such as measles, have recently seen an uptick in prevalence. About a third of measles patients need to be hospitalized. It can result in deafness or brain damage, and has a mortality rate of about .1 percent. Although measles is not as devastating as smallpox, the risk of complications are high enough that vaccinations are crucial.
The U does require the MMR vaccine for all incoming students, which covers measles, mumps and rubella. The meningococcal vaccine, which protects against a strain of bacteria that causes meningitis, should also be required for all students at the U. Bacterial meningitis is contagious and highly fatal, with late, untreated symptoms including coma and seizures. It spreads easily in dormitory and classroom settings, making it especially relevant to college students.
There are some common misconceptions about vaccines, such as the belief they have toxic ingredients that can cause lifelong complications or that they overwhelm the immune system. The worries about toxicity are overblown. For example, vaccines can contain up to 100 micrograms of formaldehyde — which seems like a lot, but the average pear contains about 12,000 micrograms of formaldehyde.
Another concern is that too many vaccines can overwhelm a baby’s developing immune system, yet babies are constantly putting their grimy, germy fingers in their mouths and up their noses. Compared to what a baby is exposed to by merely existing on planet Earth, a few proteins from a dead virus, or even a weakened but live virus, is a tiny drop in the bucket.
The more people in a population that are vaccinated, the safer the entire population is. The measles vaccine is about 99 percent effective. That means that for every 100 vaccinated people who come in contact with measles, one of them will get sick. Say an unvaccinated person gets measles from international travel, and they spread it to other unvaccinated people they come in contact with. If they all come into contact with enough vaccinated people while they are contagious, there could still be an outbreak. It would be much smaller than it would without vaccines, of course, but if it can be prevented, it should be prevented.
There are also people who have legitimate reasons to not get vaccinated. Some people are allergic to components of vaccines, and people who have suppressed immune systems should not receive live virus vaccines and will have a lesser immune response to an inactivated vaccine, meaning less protection. These are the people who need to be shielded from contagious diseases the most, and their protection depends on the healthy people around them being vaccinated.
It is crucial for public health and safety that everybody who is able gets vaccinated. For almost everyone, the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the very minor risks, and the harmful effects of the anti-vaccination movement are showing. There were recently 14 cases of measles in Texas — which isn’t a lot, but ten years ago, measles was considered obsolete in the USA. There has also been a recent outbreak of meningococcus in Australia. To protect the student population at the U, the Student Health Services needs to keep the current vaccination requirements and consider making them stricter.