Dear Doctor,
The topic of vaccines has been in the news constantly, thanks to the imminent COVID-19 vaccine. But I’m hearing a lot of conflicting information from friends and family about what to believe. Can you set the record straight about vaccine safety?
Sincerely,
“Searching for the Truth”
Dear Searching:
Vaccine misinformation is a tremendous problem in this country. And as an infectious disease expert, this has me quite alarmed. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 3 million lives are saved each year because of immunizations against potentially deadly diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, measles, pertussis, and influenza. Yet research shows that vaccination rates for both kindergarteners and teenagers in half of all states have fallen below 95%—the level needed to provide maximum protection. We see it among adults, too—less than half get the annual recommended flu shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and less than a third have had the Tdap vaccine and/or the booster. Many older adults also do not get vaccinated against pneumococcus or shingles, both of which are common.
But here’s the deal: Vaccines are one of the biggest breakthroughs in modern medicine. They’re quite miraculous. Nothing else improves life expectancy more than being up to date on all your vaccines. That’s not to say that they don’t have occasional side effects, but their risk/benefit ratio is amazing. Take the COVID-19 vaccines, for example. To date, more than 4 billion people have been vaccinated, and it has turned out to be one of the safest vaccines ever made, as there have been very few serious side effects and no well-documented deaths associated with the vaccine.
Vaccines are held to the very highest safety standards because they’re given to millions of healthy people—including children—to prevent serious diseases. Even after clinical trials with hundreds of thousands of volunteers, the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office identifies possible side effects. It conducts follow-up studies to determine whether vaccines cause health problems. While you may have heard the rumors that vaccines cause autism, numerous reviews—including a 2013 CDC study—looked at all the available research and concluded that there’s absolutely no link.
