"they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use." (Spinoza Appendix to Part 1)
Vaccines are safe, effective, and necessary for the progression of our species. Because we have not killed a single virus, we have not terminated a single virus, but instead, we have evolved against viruses with the help of vaccines.
Immunization is one of the adequate methods of containing various diseases, such as chickenpox, mumps, whooping cough, and measles. The World Health Organization evaluates that vaccinations have prevented 10 million deaths across the globe just from 2010 to 2015. (WHO 1). Vaccines have been able to eradicate smallpox, an incurable and highly contagious disease. Vaccines have restricted polio, a condition that can cause disfigurement and paralysis, to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The explanations for why these two countries still have polio outbreaks come from various reports.
From Afghanistan, Zulfiqar A. Bhutta provides information on how polio has been able to thrive in Afghanistan, "As the Taliban gained more control across the country, they banned door-to-door visits by polio workers. Cases in Afghanistan tripled between 2018 and 2020. Approximately three million children, a third of those eligible, were thus left out of vaccination campaigns. At least eight vaccinators and polio workers were killed by unidentified gunmen in several attacks this year." (2021). A population against being vaccinated allows massive outbreaks to ensue.
From Pakistan, Rana Jawad Asghar proclaims the solution is to admit there is a problem, "What we need in Pakistan is to accept that polio eradication is not solely the domain of international agencies, the government of Pakistan should also take ownership. Real ownership comes with local funding, local strategy development, and political leadership at the forefront." (2020). Vaccines can contain terrible viruses, but only when an entire population, or most, gets immunized.
An example of the dramatic effect immunization has on a population is the containment of Measles, a highly contagious disease that spreads through respiratory droplets in the air, used to infect roughly 3–4 million people a year in the United States mid-20th century. Today it infects, on average, less than 1,000 per year.
Vaccines are not only safe, but they are vital for humans to exist on this planet. Only when the majority is immunized can viruses become contained. Because viruses are not alive, they can not die, but exclusively they evolve, and so, with the science of vaccines, we evolve against them. Or, by choice, we do not.
Hernández, Timothy Alexander, AStrangeVanGogh, Thursday, March 17th, 2022, Strings, McNay
References
Asghar, R. J. (2020). Why is polio still here? A perspective from Pakistan. In The Lancet Global Health (Vol. 8, Issue 2, pp. e177–e178). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2214-109x(19)30524-8
Bhutta, Z. A. (2021). The incoming Afghan government must allow immunizations. In Nature (Vol. 597, Issue 7878, pp. 595–595). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02557-9
https://www.who.int/publications/10-year-review/chapter-vaccines.pdf
Spinoza, Benedictus , E M. Curley, and Stuart Hampshire. Ethics. , 1996. Print.
