Routine Vaccination Questions (8
Routine Vaccination Questions (8
Routine Vaccination Questions (8
Childhood Vaccinations
Top 12 questions answered with
the nuance you’re looking for
Think of population immunity like a water dam built to prevent flooding. Once it’s built, we won’t
have flooding anymore. But if the next generation comes along and says, “Hey, there’s no flooding
anymore—do we really need this dam?” and decides to get rid of it, the flooding would return quickly.
Your probability of encountering measles or polio is low because so many people around you are
vaccinated.
Protecting against flooding is most important for people who can’t save themselves—babies, the
elderly, and the sick. When adults and kids are vaccinated against common diseases, it helps protect
people whose immune system isn’t fully functioning or who haven’t been able to be vaccinated yet.
Other monitoring systems exist, including FDA BEST. We also don’t rely solely on U.S. data. The
same vaccines are used worldwide, and other countries can flag potential safety issues that we can
interrogate.
We target immune protection far more efficiently. Over the years, scientists got smarter at
targeting viruses and bacteria—exposing children to fewer and fewer parts of the microbe
(antigens) to stimulate the immune system.
1983 TODAY
Children under 2 received vaccines against Children under 2 receive vaccines against
7 diseases. 15 diseases.
These vaccine formulas were safe and These vaccine formulas target
effective
, but complex, targeting more 180 antigens and therefore ask ‘less’ of the
than 3,000 antigens. immune system.
This is one way scientists and physicians know that the number of childhood vaccines cannot
‘overwhelm’ immune systems. Also, this number of antigens is far less than the germs our immune
systems marshal a response to every day, almost always without us even knowing it. That’s the
immune system doing its job!
Advances in medical research have also led to many new vaccines that have further reduced
childhood illnesses. For example, a safe and effective Haemophilus influenza type b (“HiB”) vaccine
was developed in the late 1980s. It has dramatically lowered rates of childhood meningitis (brain
infections), pneumonia, and epiglottitis (infection of the epiglottis that prevents kids from
breathing). The same can be said for vaccines against varicella, pneumonia, rotavirus, and others
capable of causing severe illness and deaths of children.
That said, to stay protected from certain diseases (like pertussis, aka “whooping cough”, or
tetanus, aka “lockjaw”), you may need a vaccine booster. This is for a few reasons:
1. Catching these diseases usually acts as a natural booster but would also put you and your
family at risk.
2. Even if you got infected, boosters can help. For example, a tetanus infection will not give
you any immunity—the dose of toxin is too low to activate an antibody response; you have
no protection from getting tetanus a second time if you are infected. A vaccine can help.
3. Some diseases need annual booster shots because viruses change quickly. For example,
the flu virus changes from year to year, so each year’s shot targets a different version of the
virus. Scientists are hard at work figuring out the details of how to make current vaccines
work better, but until those mysteries are unraveled, boosters it is.
The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) was enacted in 1986, after
parent activists who believed their children were harmed by vaccines engaged in a series of
lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies seeking compensation for damages. While there
weren’t any major wins on the part of these groups, the cost of these trials eventually reached
a point where it was more than what vaccine manufacturers were earning from their products.
Consequently, many vaccine manufacturers stopped making vaccines; it didn't make financial
sense for them to do so–and the handful that remained were contemplating doing the same.
At that point, Congress stepped in with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA),
which created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. This act granted
pharmaceutical companies certain legal protections and established a no-fault compensation
system operated by the Department of Health and Human Services with a reduced burden of
proof for petitioners who felt they had been harmed by vaccines. The system is paid for by an
excise tax on each vaccine dose. The program also established a table of known vaccine-related
adverse events–all of them quite rare–for which compensation is provided expeditiously.
This act also established a number of important oversights, including the previously mentioned
Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System and a non-governmental committee to determine
vaccine safety.
This system is imperfect, but it ensures that people harmed by vaccines have a path to
compensation and that we still have access to lifesaving vaccines.
Financial: Most countries’ governments pay for vaccines through national healthcare
systems with fixed budgets, so the cost-benefit analysis is a big consideration when making
policy decisions—for some countries, it would be too expensive for the government to
vaccinate everyone, so they try to find where the money will have the biggest impact.
Sometimes, this can have unexpected results. For example, modeling data suggests that
when resources are constrained, prioritizing school-aged children for flu vaccination has the
greatest benefit in minimizing flu deaths, even though the majority of deaths occur in the
elderly (because this would have the biggest effect on transmission). The U.S. is fortunate in
that, rather than having to pick and choose from a place of limited resources, it can offer the
vaccine to everyone.
Safety net: The U.S. has much less wiggle room because of worse healthcare access, social
support, healthcare capacity, and health. Casting a larger net through universal vaccine
recommendations is more critical than in other countries.
Availability and accessibility: Some countries use the oral polio vaccine instead of the
inactivated polio vaccine because the oral kind is easier to administer (you don’t need people
trained in giving injections), cheaper, and stops transmission better. The oral polio vaccine
has a different number and timing of doses than the inactivated polio vaccine. However,
because the oral vaccine contains actual poliovirus and can revert to paralytic polio if it
circulates in the environment, use of the oral vaccine is considered only in places where there
is a lot of polio (although even this is being reconsidered).
Epidemiological: Though the diseases themselves are the same, their behavior within a
particular country might differ. For example, meningitis caused by meningococcal B tends to
occur in adolescents and young adults (and in particular in congregant living settings like
college dorms), but throughout Europe, invasive meningococcal disease due to these
bacteria is more common among infants. For this reason, many European countries have a
recommendation for a meningococcal B vaccination in infancy, whereas the U.S. does not.
What is clear is that vaccines, particularly MMR vaccines, do not cause autism. We know this
because of a few reasons:
1. This rumor became prominent in the mid-1990s after a fraudulent scientific study was
published by a scientist with conflicts of interest (trying to make his own measles vaccine)
who eventually lost his medical license.
2. Huge, robust studies (spanning millions of children across many countries) have not found a
link between autism and vaccines.
3. Scientists have learned that the hallmark of autism is dysregulation of brain development
starting in the prenatal period before childhood vaccines are introduced.
4. The rise in autism has been linked to physicians better recognizing the condition (changes in
diagnostic criteria) and autism being previously categorized as something else (called
diagnostic substitution). Studies that have compared autism rates across generations using
updated diagnostic criteria show that rates are roughly the same.
The highest risk factor for hepatitis B (or HBV) is a history of sexually
transmitted infections or multiple sex partners. So, if you’ve only had
one partner for a decade, is this even applicable to your baby?
1. The majority of people with HBV globally are unaware they have it. Many who do have it
don’t know how they contracted it. If we only give it to people who believe they are high-
risk, we will miss many cases. Remember: it can take decades from the time you contract
hepatitis B virus before symptoms become apparent.
2. Hepatitis B virus requires only a very tiny dose to cause infections, which means that even
though it is bloodborne and sexually transmitted, it can be spread casually, like through
sharing a toothbrush or even through being bitten by an infected person (such as at
daycare).
3. It’s very stable in the environment, capable of remaining infectious for weeks and even
months on surfaces.
4. The outcomes can be severe. Mother-to-baby transmission at birth is the most common
cause of chronic HBV infection, which can lead to liver cancer, liver failure, and death. If
babies contract hepatitis B disease near birth, 95% develop the chronic form.
The HBV vaccine induces protective immune responses in nearly everyone (80-100%). The
vaccine risks are extremely low—the only safety signal found is rare allergic reactions (one
severe allergic reaction for every 2-3 million doses).
However, case series often generate more questions than answers because they can’t assess
causality (correlation doesn’t equal causation). Fortunately, no rigorous lab or epidemiological
follow-up studies have found a link:
No effect of HPV vaccination on fertility has been found in 3 studies in rodents.
A strong study in North America followed women planning on getting pregnant. Some of
the women (and their partners) had their HPV vaccines, some of them didn’t. The
scientists found no difference in infertility. In fact, in some groups, vaccinated women had
higher fertility.
Another large study found that 120 of 199,078 female patients at hospitals had POI.
There was no difference between those with the HPV vaccine and those without.
It is also critical to note that being infected by the HPV virus can harm fertility because of the
procedures involved in treating HPV-related cancers. Some evidence has also suggested that
HPV itself may reduce male fertility.
Upon infection, vaccines can also lessen the severity of several diseases. Most recently, this has
been demonstrated in a number of COVID-19 vaccine studies, which have found that
vaccinated individuals, compared with unvaccinated individuals, are less likely to become
severely ill.
For many vaccine-preventable diseases, immunity from an infection can be imperfect- it may
still make sense to get vaccinated even after recovering to help prevent serious illness from
reinfection and to reduce spread.
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Do we need to be reinfected to keep the immune
system active? What about boosters? 5
1. World Health Organization. Tetanus. Who.int. 2024; published online July 12.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tetanus.
2. Berman M, Rupp R. You still need a flu shot even if you’ve already been ill. UTMB News.
2022; published online Dec 7. https://www.utmb.edu/news/article/health-
blog/2022/12/07/you-still-need-a-flu-shot-even-if-you-ve-already-been-ill.
3. Seasonal influenza vaccination strategies. European Centre for Disease Prevention and
Control. 2023; published online May 23. https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/seasonal-
influenza/prevention-and-control/vaccines/vaccination-strategies.
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Why does the U.S. have different
7 recommendations than other countries?
1. Global Vaccination Schedules. vaccineknowledge.ox.ac.uk. 2022; published online March 9.
https://vaccineknowledge.ox.ac.uk/vaccination-schedules-other-countries#Why-are-different-
vaccination-schedules-used-in-different-countries.
2. Guillaume D, Meyer D, Waheed D-N, et al. Factors influencing the prioritization of vaccines by
policymakers in low and middle income countries: A scoping review. Health Policy and Planning 2022;
published online Oct 31. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czac092.
3. Kaur G. Routine Vaccination Coverage — Worldwide, 2022. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report 2023; 72. DOI:https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7243a1.
4. Vaccine Scheduler | ECDC. vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu. https://vaccine-
schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/Scheduler/ByDisease?SelectedDiseaseId=48&SelectedCountryIdByDisease=-1.
5. Servadio JL, Choisy M, Thai PQ, Boni MF. Influenza vaccine allocation in tropical settings under
constrained resources. PNAS Nexus 2024; 3. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae379.
6. GPEI-Oral polio vaccine. Polioeradication.org. 2024. https://polioeradication.org/about-polio/the-
vaccines/opv/.
7. Molodecky N, Su R, Er, et al. Evaluation of the 2016 switch from tOPV to bOPV 1 Switch Evalua-on Team:
Strategy Commi?ee (SC) of the Global Polio Eradica-on Ini-a-ve (GPEI). 2024
https://polioeradication.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Switch-Report-20240930.pdf (accessed Nov
22, 2024).
8. Villena R, Safadi MAP, Valenzuela MT, Torres JP, Finn A, O’Ryan M. Global epidemiology of serogroup B
meningococcal disease and opportunities for prevention with novel recombinant protein vaccines.
Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 2018; 14: 1042–57.
9. Outbreaks on U.S. College Campuses – National Meningitis Association. National Meningitis Association.
https://nmaus.org/nma-disease-prevention-information/serogroup-b-meningococcal-
disease/outbreaks-on-u-s-college-campuses/.
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How do we know that the rise in autism is not
9
linked to vaccines?
1. Sandin S, Lichtenstein P, Kuja-Halkola R, Hultman C, Larsson H, Reichenberg A. The Heritability
of Autism Spectrum Disorder. JAMA 2017; 318: 1182.
2. Godlee F, Smith J, Marcovitch H. Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was
fraudulent. BMJ 2011; 342: c7452–2.
3. Deer B. Andrew Wakefield’s vaccine patent. Brian Deer.
https://briandeer.com/wakefield/vaccine-patent.htm.
4. Taylor LE, Swerdfeger AL, Eslick GD. Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based
meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies. Vaccine 2014; 32: 3623–9.
5. Gerber Jeffrey S, Offit Paul A, Plotkin S. Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses.
Clinical Infectious Diseases 2009; 48: 456–61.
6. Hviid A, Hansen JV, Frisch M, Melbye M. Measles, mumps, rubella vaccination and autism. Annals
of Internal Medicine 2019; 170: 513–20.
7. Courchesne E, Gazestani VH, Lewis NE. Prenatal Origins of ASD: The When, What, and How of
ASD Development. Trends in Neurosciences 2020; 43: 326–42.
8. King M, Bearman P. Diagnostic change and the increased prevalence of autism. International
Journal of Epidemiology 2009; 38: 1224–34.
9. Brugha TS, McManus S, Bankart J, et al. Epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders in adults in
the community in England. Archives of General Psychiatry 2011; 68: 459–65.
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