Vaccines

 I read about the vaccines from Anna Rothschild.  In this article she talks and creates videos showing the history of vaccines and also provides meaningful facts and figures regarding vaccine and safety. Anna Rothschild, while not stating that she may be related to the actual Rothschilds, has devoted her career to reporting on biology and heath risks to the public.  She has a background at NYU and Brown and has a strong education path within Biology and Vaccines. 

The article talks about different facts regarding vaccines. Some of them relate to how vaccines started, while others point to the advancement of vaccines throughout the years. The article is relatively short but the true value is gained from the video where much more information is talked about there.  I have written about each video in depth below.

The first video talks about the history of vaccines and goes into a deep dive of the start of them and the impact that it had on the American people but also else where around the world.  They mainly talk about small pocks which was a very big problem before vaccines as it was visible and affected the human body detrimentally. Anna talks to an expert about how they would use a small amount of the actual small pox vaccine in order to treat the person through a small incision.  This was very effective and helped hempen the affect.  Although this is when they get into the small percentage of people who were anti vaxers. People who would worry about injecting themselves with the actual virus, or people who thought vaccinations was against their liberties.  Anna talks about how dangerous this is because of heard immunity and the absence of people without vaccine,  makes it more dangerous for everyone else.  She does a great job of telling the history of vaccines but also describing and pointing out how this small percentage of the population is actually hurting others and it is not based in fact but instead just paranoia.  

The second video really went deep into an illness called diphtheria that used to be very common in the olden days.  This is when Anna brings in a specialist where she talks about the treatment.  As tech progressed the first scientific breakthrough was of the use of anti toxins.  This would allow the body to develop a response to the vaccine without needing to be injected with the actual vaccine.  This would allow better treatment for sicknesses.  As time went on there were other chemicals that were added to vaccines.  One was thought to increase autism which was disproven when they stopped the use of it and the rate of autism didnt decrease at all.  She later talked about the flu shot and why there is one needed every single year because of how rapidly it all shifts.  It is funny to me in this video because I finally started to realize that because people dont know much about something they freak out and attribute weird unscientific beliefs about it.  Medicine and vaccines are tough and hard to wrap our heads around.  It is about things that you cant see or touch, and it alters this.  This can get many people worried, but this worry is what causes all the controversy around it.  

In the third video it goes into the history of the regulation regarding vaccines, and also the different types of trials.  It talks about the history of the first government regulation and all of the acts that made it the highly regulated sector that it is today.  They then brought on fauci to then talk about the stages of testing and all of the work that vaccines go through in order to get tested.  This boosted the understanding of the audience on just how much work is put in to vaccines and ensuring that they are safe. 

I thought that the article was good.  I never knew the history of vaccines and where they came from.  This was very interesting to see how it advanced into what we know today while also allowing myself for more insights. I do think that I was not the intended target for this article as I accept vaccines and dont have any qualms with them.  I know how much regulation is surrounding them and I generally do not worry about their safety. I know that the people who created them are very smart and the doctors that are prescribing them are doing it for a reason.  I also know that I make more risks myself in my every day life than these doctors will make with me.  They are extremely cautious as there is a large liability on their back.   I think that this article was great to give the general public a better understanding of something that is very difficult to understand.  As I started to realize above people are worried about this because they dont know about it,  allowing for better understanding will stop the doubt that can creep into people.  

Critical thinking is very important.  I do not think that this article required too much critical thinking for the fact that it was very fact based, lead by experts, and shared nearly zero opinions.  Because of this it was more of a history lesson than anything that I had to think about.  The harder thing to think about is the actual topic of vaccines.  I am honestly surprised that there is this much controversy around this subject.  It seems pretty hypocritical for someone to eat a McDonalds burger with who knows how many hormones in there, or take a birth control pill but not take a shot.  I am not sure why this is where the controversy lies.  But you can see this in all science no matter where, there is always debate.  I see this a lot in the fitness category.  Science tends to have controversy, but the vaccine sector has so much oversight, so much regulation, I dont see why this part of science is where people will die on.  

I am lucky that my aunt works in pharmaceuticals, or big pharma as you could say.  And hey, so does her husband.  Both BIG PHARMA, which is another thing that people freak out about.  But this has allowed me to get great insight into her thoughts on this topic.  And it is pretty logical but not entirely what you think.  Surprisingly she doesn't like all vaccines. Gasp.  What. I know.  The person that sells vaccines doesn't take all vaccines.  But this is where an anti vaxer would take this out of context.  Yes she doesn't like all vaccines, but also the only vaccine she doesn't take is the flu.  That's it.  She likes pretty much every other one. While I have heard the scientific reason, and it is very complicated.  The simplified version is that vaccines take a long time to produce, which is a good and bad thing.  But because the flu changes every year this is very hard to predict.  So rather than developing it for the specific strand, they instead have to guess and hope that they are right.  This makes it extremely ineffective and not worth the time or hassle.  

Ultimately my main take away is that the amount of regulation, lab coats, and money that goes into these vaccines makes it hard for me, purely a business student, to question at all.  It seems very ignorant and from a place of fear in order to call wolf on these vaccines.  It is not their first rodeo, and the last thing they want is to get sued.  Besides the science which is too advanced, there are too many checks in our highly regulated world that would not allow a vaccine to be ineffective or have a negative side effect.  There are too many lawyers for this to be the case.  Ultimately, get your shots, help the herd, and don't complain.