Here’s a fact: vaccines save lives. According to the World Health Organization, 154 million deaths have been prevented globally over the last 50 years thanks to vaccines. This is equivalent to saving six lives, most of them children, every minute of every year. In the United States, a new analysis from the Centers for Disease Control finds that a three-decade effort to mobilize families to get vaccines will prevent 1.13 million deaths, 32 million hospitalizations and 508 million illnesses.
“Vaccines have been one of the best preventative health measures we have,” Dr. Pedro Piedraprofessor of molecular virology at Baylor College of Medicine, told Yahoo Life. “They have done so well that many of the diseases that we were worried about decades ago are no longer circulating or circulating at very low levels.”
He adds: “So what vaccines have been able to do is actually allow us to live longer. People may not realize this. This has been one of the main benefits in addition to keeping us healthier.”
However, misinformation about vaccines grown enough be considered a threat to public health because it prevents people from getting the vaccines needed to prevent the spread of disease. Here are five important things you should know about vaccines.
Vaccines protect against serious illness and death
Vaccines help the immune system fight infections more effectively. Some vaccines prevent the occurrence of diseases – such as measles, polio and whooping cough – while others make the disease less serious. The main question is whether a virus is stable, that is, predictable, or undergoes many mutations.
This is why, for certain diseases, vaccinated people can still become infected. Some vaccines, such as HPV (human papillomavirus), for example, which protect against certain types of cancer, are close to 100% effective. HPV is a relatively stable virus, unlike SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus that causes COVID. SARS‑CoV‑2 mutates quickly, even more so than the flu, which changes every year — making it more difficult to achieve such high efficacy rates. This is also why flu and now COVID vaccines need to be updated every year.
But they are still considered highly effective vaccines. According to the CDC, people who received the updated COVID-19 vaccine were 54% less likely to contract COVID-19 during the four-month period from mid-September 2023 to January 2024. Flu vaccines are equally effective: they reduce the risk of having to go to the doctor with the flu by 40% to 60%. While these numbers may be lower than you might expect, immunologist Andreia Amor explained in an Instagram post that “even a vaccine that is 50% effective in preventing symptomatic disease offers more protection than if you had no protection.”
Dr.professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine, who is encouraging people to get updated COVID and flu vaccines this fall, agrees. When it comes to COVID and flu vaccines, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do: “They are effective in preventing serious infections, hospitalization and death,” says Winslow.
You can safely get more than one vaccine at a time
Receiving multiple vaccines at once — whether childhood immunizations or an adult getting COVID and influenza vaccines at the same time — is safe, according to the CDC. “There is no real scientific evidence that getting multiple vaccines at the same time is harmful,” says Winslow, except possibly for a sore arm and a low-grade fever. “If you’re going to have some symptoms, it’s best to get it over with,” he adds.
Greg Marks, pharmaceutical program coordinator for antimicrobial stewardship at Cedars-Sinai, explains that the immunization schedules for children and adolescents are recommendations prepared by experts “who have researched and analyzed the data that exist and who know these vaccines more than anyone else. There are studies on different combinations of vaccines and no evidence that administering vaccines together, as recommended by the schedule, is associated with any real additional harm – that ‘overload’ of the immune system.”
He adds that separating vaccines could mean having to make more appointments to get them, as well as more time to miss work. “And the longer you are potentially exposed too,” he told Yahoo Life.
Piedra agrees: “You want to protect them as early as possible. If you start creating your own regime, the only person you are helping is the parents – that is not helping the child.”
Vaccines do not cause autism
One very heavy amount of research shows that there is no link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorder. The controversy began with a debunked 1998 paper in the Lancet, which had just 12 study participants and suggested a link between autism and the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. The article, which was retracted in 2010, was written by Andrew Wakefield, who lost his license to create data, Winslow notes. But the damage was done, leaving some parents reluctant to immunize their children.
According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “Over the past two decades, many scientists have made rigorous studies to find out whether any aspect of vaccines can cause autism”, analyzing both the ingredients of the vaccines and obtaining multiple vaccines in a short space of time and concluded that “none of these studies show any link between vaccines and autism”.
Vaccine ingredients are safe
The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for ensuring that vaccines are safe and effective. “Vaccines are one of the safest products we have,” says Winslow. “They have to be safe because they are given to millions and millions of people and many are given to very young children. Therefore, the FDA is very rigorous in its licensing approach to ensure that vaccines are safe for the intended population.”
One concern that some people have about vaccines is mercury, which has been one of the most commonly used vaccine preservatives. In 2001, however, it was removed from or reduced in all routinely recommended vaccines for children 6 years of age and younger. “The small amount of mercury as a preservative in some vaccines has been removed from almost all vaccines, but even that amount is less than what you would be exposed to if you ate shellfish every day,” says Winslow. To put this into perspective, the small amount of mercury still present in a minority of vaccines is approximately the the same amount you would find in a 3-ounce can of tunaaccording to the FDA.
Piedra explains that there are also different types of mercury. The one found in some vaccines is thimerosal, which he says is “a safer mercury than that found in, say, the things we eat. It’s different in the way it’s metabolized.” More specifically, thimerosal is easily clean of the body so it doesn’t reach harmful levels, according to the CDC.
It is important to note that some vaccines contain ingredients that people may be allergic to. For example, flu and yellow fever vaccines are both made in eggswhich means these vaccines contain egg proteins. Although the C.D.C. recommends Talking to your doctor before getting the flu shot, the organization says that serious allergic reactions in people with egg allergies are considered rare and even recommends getting injections as needed.
Getting vaccinated protects your health – and that of others
Vaccines not only protect you from getting sick, they also protect others in your family and community. Peidra explains that, in the case of infectious diseases, if the majority of people are vaccinated, large outbreaks will be prevented from occurring. It also protects those who cannot be vaccinated against certain diseases. This is the concept behind collective immunitysays Marcos.
“This is an important concept because there are immunocompromised people who can be vaccinated, but their response may be reduced, so having this collective immunity is very important for people with these conditions”, he says. Marks states that newborns, for example, cannot be vaccinated until a certain age, as can people who are allergic to certain components of vaccines.
However, Winslow says that with COVID, we may never reach herd immunity because of how quickly the virus mutates. But regarding the COVID vaccine, “Even if it doesn’t 100% reduce your own risk of infection, you’re still doing it not just for yourself, but for other people. For me, it’s being a good citizen.”
