Herd Immunity and Vaccines

This week, Ginger Campbell, MD, in her Books and Ideas podcast, interviewed Paul Offit, MD, author of Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement threatens Us All. Below are some highlights:

It is vital to understand the importance of herd immunity and why it is the key to preventing the spread of infectious diseases.

The definition of ‘herd immunity’ is that when you get to a certain critical percentage of people who around you are vaccinated you’re going to be protected, independent of whether you’re vaccinated or not.

You actually have a lesser chance of getting a disease if you hadn’t been vaccinated but live in a highly-vaccinated community than if you had been vaccinated and live in a relatively unvaccinated community. So, herd immunity is critical—especially for people who can’t be vaccinated. And there are about 500,000 Americans who can’t be vaccinated because they’re getting chemotherapy for their cancers, or immune suppressive therapy for their chronic diseases or for their transplants. They depend on those around them to be vaccinated, because if they’re not, then they’re the ones who are most likely to be hospitalized and to die. We always think about this as just for us or for our children, solely, but it does affect those around us. It’s really not a decision you make solely for yourself.

Herd immunity also protects children when they’re too young to be immunized, and also it protects those rare people who don’t respond to vaccines even though they are immunized.

If you look at the whooping cough epidemic in California now, there have been 10 deaths. All of those deaths were in children less than 3 months of age, so they wouldn’t have been able to be effectively vaccinated.

Discussion included Bob Sears book called, The Vaccine Book. This book recommended an alternative schedule for immunizations, however, there is no scientific evidence that such is needed. The notion that vaccines are weakening, or overwhelming, or perturbing the immune system just doesn’t jive with what we know about what’s contained in vaccines. It’s a delayed vaccine schedule, so, therefore, it only increases the time during which the children are at risk. And for what? There’s no benefit in doing that.

Vaccines today are much more effective than in the past and have fewer side effects.

The idea that babies are getting the vaccines too soon, before they’re able to make antibodies, is invalid.

There was the story of a young girl who was vaccinated but never made an antibody response and subsequently got a serious, life-altering meningitis infection. She was living in an area that had a dramatic decrease in the use of the appropriate vaccine. Her mother stated in a congressional hearing: “Parents need to understand that when they choose not to vaccinate, they’re making a decision for other people’s children, as well.”

Parents should want to know what the immunization rate is in this daycare center, what the immunization rate is in this first grade class, etc. If my child is going to be in a class with a large number of children who aren’t vaccinated, I don’t want my child to be there.
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Why reject one of the greatest scientific and medical achievements for the advise from a few pseudoscientific celebrities and/or physicians?