Are Vaccines Still Important?

Are Vaccines Still Important?

Early in 2025, I wrote a post about vaccines, stressing how important many vaccines are. Recently, I’ve had discussions with friends and family about vaccines and was surprised by how many people were against vaccines in general and objected to specific vaccines that are uncontroversial in the scientific community. I listened and tried to understand their concerns. It can be unnerving to have foreign material injected into our bodies. People feel different about an injection than they do about consuming something orally or inhaling it. Some of the same people who avoid all vaccines are perfectly willing to consume hallucinogens, tobacco products, and alcohol, which are more dangerous than any vaccine. They can eat bad carbs without concern, yet refuse to get a vaccine, which is proven to save lives with minimal risk of harm.

It can be even scarier to allow our children to get shots. Knowing the history of the vaccines might alleviate some of the concerns. Before vaccines, parents lived in fear that their children would get measles, diphtheria, polio, and other infections. Every year, thousands of adults and children died of diseases that vaccines now prevent. During the frequent outbreaks, parents were afraid to let their children leave the home.

Vaccines changed everything. I was an Infectious Diseases specialist and internist, and I saw one case of measles, a few cases of rubella (German measles), and no cases of smallpox, diphtheria, or acute polio. If you lived before the measles vaccine came out, virtually everyone got measles, and you likely knew someone who had polio.

We don’t see the infections much at all now and haven’t for years. People who didn’t live during those times don’t understand what it took to eliminate smallpox and virtually eliminate the other infections I just mentioned. They don’t know that all of these infections (except smallpox) are still common in parts of the world. Globally, there are over 60,000 rabies cases per year, all fatal. Over 99% of these are caused by dog bites. What would happen if we stopped vaccinating dogs? We would see cases again. Now, we have very few cases in the United States, nearly all from exposure to bats or raccoons, and virtually all in people who didn’t get the vaccine after exposure.

If you study the history of these infections, you can’t fail to understand that we no longer have them because of the vaccines. Vaccines have risks. Everything does. That is not the point. The point is whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

One argument some people have against vaccines is that the person in question is not likely to benefit much because they aren’t likely to become ill with the disease, anyway. That is true enough, but that is the whole point of all safety measures. Do something that will protect you in the uncommon but serious event that it happens. That is why we buy smoke alarms. Most people will never experience a fire in their home, but I don’t want to die from one. Same with homeowners’ insurance, seatbelts, car seats for babies, bicycle helmets, carbon monoxide detectors, life jackets, and back-up parachutes. The list goes on forever. I am 57 and have never been in a serious car accident. I probably never will, but if I do, I want to minimize my odds of dying. I take 15 seconds a few times a day to put on a seatbelt, knowing that it is unlikely ever to help me. I take a smoke alarm and a carbon monoxide detector on every trip. In the slight chance the hotel or rental home owner doesn’t maintain working alarms, my family and I are protected.

In addition to the individual, vaccines clearly benefit society. Here are links to individual data on Human Papillomavirus (New England Journal, Cochrane Review), Smallpox, TDaP (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis), and MMR (measles, mumps, rubella). Special note to pregnant women and those who may become pregnant. The MMR article I just linked discusses the horrible birth defects associated with rubella in pregnant women. This is called the congenital rubella syndrome. In the 1964 and 1965 epidemic, over 20,000 babies contracted this syndrome. These articles discuss the overwhelming benefits of the vaccines, and most of the articles also discuss their safety.

Below is from UpToDate. It is a chart of the Effectiveness of routine childhood vaccines.

As with everything, vaccines have risks. The benefits of vaccines significantly outweigh these risks, and serious adverse effects from vaccines are uncommon. The most common side effects are pain at the injection site, fatigue, and fever. Neurologic reactions such as Guillain-Barré Syndrome are much, much less common. People often talk about severe reactions they had to a vaccine. Some of the stories are real, but many are coincidental and not related to the shot itself. Remember, people who have bad reactions to vaccines, real or not, often talk about it, but the millions who get vaccines with minimal or no difficulty don’t.

Johns Hopkins has an excellent site on vaccine safety. Among many other topics, it outlines the data supporting vaccine use. Many people, including some in the government, complain that vaccines haven’t been adequately studied with regard to risks. This site should help assuage them. Also, here is an excellent article showing how much study goes into vaccines and their safety.

When our son was young, I sometimes worried about all the vaccinations he received. Was it safe to give him so many shots at the same time? The coadministration of vaccines has been studied extensively. There is a small added risk of fever and even febrile seizures if multiple vaccines are given together. As scary as that sounds, the risk is small, and fever-related seizures are usually benign. On the other hand, dividing up all the shots causes significant problems. It is difficult to take children to the doctor multiple times in the first two years, and many children would miss out on the vaccines that can save their lives.

When deciding whether to get a vaccine for yourself or your children, please keep in mind the benefits and the risks. It is easy to focus on one or the other. Doctors sometimes focus only on the benefits of vaccines, and if you haven’t personally seen the dangers of the infections themselves, it is easy to focus on the risks. In recent days, we have seen a resurgence in vaccine-preventable infections, most notably measles. If we are not careful, it could soon get much worse.