The topic concerning health seems to be coming up a lot lately, of course, everyone has worries about health. Sickness and disease are the main enemies against health, not including death, which is just an end. People can’t do anything against the end, but they can at least do something about sickness and disease.

There are many ways to try to prevent oneself from getting an illness, and vaccines are just the direct way of doing so. Although vaccines are not a definite guarantee, they help to increase the odds in people’s favor. Despite that, some people decide not to take those vaccines due to various things, ranging from religious beliefs to personal beliefs.

Most choices in life come with pros and cons, some weigh heavily to one side. This also contributes to why people decide not to the vaccinations. The people who are against vaccinations believe the cons outweigh the pros. They hear that vaccinations increase the chance of autism, and that even if you are vaccinated, you can still get the sickness. So in their minds, they avoid something risky, and nothing changes about the situation.

Unfortunately, they don’t consider the consequences of what should happen if they get the sickness. Measles can lead to brain damage, or other sicknesses, which can ultimately lead to death.  From this, the considerations should be changed from “chance to get autism vs chance not to get sickness,” to “chance of death vs chance of not getting sick.”

While autism in itself is not much of a good thing, when weighed against death, it’s the lesser of two evils, but that assuming that vaccinations do lead to autism. At present, there isn’t much to support the claim. All that needs to be considered is what vaccinations entail.

Yes they do have some side effects depending on the people, no they don’t guarantee protection, but the when weighing the sides again, those small side effects don’t compare to the consequences. There is also the matter of probability to think about. A person’s chances of being protected is in the high ninety percent, while the chance of getting it is less than five percent.

For example, there are balls in a jar labeled 1-100. 1-5 are the losing numbers, and the rest are winning numbers. The chance to get the losing numbers is there, but you’re more likely to get the winning numbers. The vaccines are what give people these chances, and to not take them simply leaves you with worse chances.

To summarize, vaccines entail higher protection chance, uncertain chance for increased autism, and small side effects. While measles presents no real benefits, brain damage, death, and other possible negative things.

There is not much to lose from taking vaccinations.

Sources:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/measles-outbreak-swells-121-cases-year-cdc/story?id=28830089

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/02/11/measles-outbreak-in-dollars-and-cents-it-costs-taxpayers-bigtime/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/02/09/measles-outbreak-spreads-to-three-more-states-121-people-now-affected/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/09/measles-outbreak-vaccine-questions_n_6648086.html