get vaccinated essay

Profilaxis previa a la exposición (PrEP)

The importance of vaccinations.

Last Updated August 2023 | This article was created by familydoctor.org editorial staff and reviewed by Deepak S. Patel, MD, FAAFP, FACSM

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Childhood vaccines: what they are and why your child needs them, immunization schedules, preventive services for healthy living.

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There has been confusion and misunderstandings about vaccines. But vaccinations are an important part of family and public health. Vaccines prevent the spread of contagious, dangerous, and deadly diseases. These include measles, polio, mumps, chicken pox, whooping cough, diphtheria, HPV, and COVID-19.

The first vaccine discovered was the smallpox vaccine. Smallpox was a deadly illness. It killed 300 million to 500 million people around the world in the last century. After the vaccine was given to people, the disease was eventually erased. It’s the only disease to be completely destroyed. There are now others close to that point, including polio.

When vaccination rates decline, cases of preventable diseases go up. This has been happening in recent years with measles. As of July 7, 2023, the Centers for Disease Control has been notified of 18 confirmed cases in 12 U.S. jurisdictions. That may not seem like a lot but compare it with just 3 cases during the same time in 2022. By the end of 2022, there were 121 cases. Almost all those cases could have been prevented with vaccines.

What are vaccines?

A vaccine (or immunization) is a way to build your body’s natural immunity to a disease before you get sick. This keeps you from getting and spreading the disease.

For some vaccines, a weakened form of the disease germ is injected into your body. This is usually done with a shot in the leg or arm. Your body detects the invading germs (antigens) and produces antibodies to fight them. Those antibodies then stay in your body for a long time. In many cases, they stay for the rest of your life. If you’re ever exposed to the disease again, your body will fight it off without you ever getting the disease.

Some illnesses, like strains of cold viruses, are fairly mild. But some, like COVID-19, smallpox or polio, can cause life-altering changes. They can even result in death. That’s why preventing your body from contracting these illnesses is very important.

How does immunity work?

Your body builds a defense system to fight foreign germs that could make you sick or hurt you. It’s called your immune system. To build up your immune system, your body must be exposed to different germs. When your body is exposed to a germ for the first time, it produces antibodies to fight it. But that takes time, and you usually get sick before the antibodies have built up. But once you have antibodies, they stay in your body. So, the next time you’re exposed to that germ, the antibodies will attack it, and you won’t get sick.

Path to improved health

Everyone needs vaccines. They are recommended for infants, children, teenagers, and adults. There are widely accepted immunization schedules available. They list what vaccines are needed, and at what age they should be given. Most vaccines are given to children. It’s recommended they receive 12 different vaccines by their 6th birthday. Some of these come in a series of shots. Some vaccines are combined so they can be given together with fewer shots.

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) believes that immunization is essential to preventing the spread of contagious diseases. Vaccines are especially important for at-risk populations such as young children and older adults. The AAFP offers vaccination recommendations,  immunization schedules , and information on disease-specific vaccines.

Being up to date on vaccines is especially important as children head back to school. During the 2021 school year, state-required vaccines among kindergarteners dropped from 95% to 94%. In the 2021-2022 year it fell again to 93%. Part of this was due to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is there anyone who can’t get vaccines?

Some people with certain immune system diseases should not receive some types of vaccines and should speak with their health care providers first.  There is also a small number of people who don’t respond to a particular vaccine. Because these people can’t be vaccinated, it’s very important everyone else gets vaccinated. This helps preserve the “herd immunity” for the vast majority of people. This means that if most people are immune to a disease because of vaccinations, it will stop spreading.

Are there side effects to vaccines?

There can be side effects after you or your child get a vaccine. They are usually mild. They include redness or swelling at the injection site. Sometimes children develop a low-grade fever. These symptoms usually go away in a day or two. More serious side effects have been reported but are rare.

Typically, it takes years of development and testing before a vaccine is approved as safe and effective. However, in cases affecting a global, public health crisis or pandemic, it is possible to advance research, development, and production of a vaccine for emergency needs. Scientists and doctors at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study the research before approving a vaccine. They also inspect places where the vaccines are produced to make sure all rules are being followed. After the vaccine is released to the public, the FDA continues to monitor its use. It makes sure there are no safety issues.

The benefits of their use far outweigh any risks of side effects.

What would happen if we stopped vaccinating children and adults?

If we stopped vaccinating, the diseases would start coming back. Aside from smallpox, all other diseases are still active in some part of the world. If we don’t stay vaccinated, the diseases will come back. There would be epidemics, just like there used to be.

This happened in Japan in the 1970s. They had a good vaccination program for pertussis (whooping cough). Around 80% of Japanese children received a vaccination. In 1974, there were 393 cases of whooping cough and no deaths. Then rumors began that the vaccine was unsafe and wasn’t needed. By 1976, the vaccination rate was 10%. In 1979, there was a pertussis epidemic, with more than 13,000 cases and 41 deaths. Soon after, vaccination rates improved, and the number of cases went back down.

Things to consider

There have been many misunderstandings about vaccines. There are myths and misleading statements that spread on the internet and social media about vaccines. Here are answers to 5 of the most common questions/misconceptions about vaccines.

Vaccines do NOT cause autism.

Though multiple studies have been conducted, none have shown a link between autism and vaccines.  The initial paper that started the rumor has since been discredited.

Vaccines are NOT too much for an infant’s immune system to handle.

Infants’ immune systems can handle much more than what vaccines give them. They are exposed to hundreds of bacteria and viruses every day. Adding a few more with a vaccine doesn’t add to what their immune systems are capable of handling.

Vaccines do NOT contain toxins that will harm you.

Some vaccines contain trace amounts of substances that could be harmful in a large dose. These include formaldehyde, aluminum, and mercury. But the amount used in the vaccines is so small that the vaccines are completely safe. For example, over the course of all vaccinations by the age of 2, a child will take in 4mg of aluminum. A breast-fed baby will take in 10mg in 6 months. Soy-based formula delivers 120mg in 6 months. In addition, infants have 10 times as much formaldehyde naturally occurring in their bodies than what is contained in a vaccine. And the toxic form of mercury has never been used in vaccines.

Vaccines do NOT cause the diseases they are meant to prevent.

This is a common misconception, especially about the flu vaccine. Many people think they get sick after getting a flu shot. But flu shots contain dead viruses—it’s impossible to get sick from the shot but mild symptoms can occur because the vaccine may trigger an immune response, which is normal. Even with vaccines that use weakened live viruses, you could experience mild symptoms similar to the illness. But you don’t actually have the disease.

We DO still need vaccines in the U.S., even though infection rates are low.

Many diseases are uncommon in the U.S. because of our high vaccination rate. But they haven’t been eliminated from other areas of the world. If a traveler from another country brings a disease to the U.S., anyone who isn’t vaccinated is at risk of getting that disease. The only way to keep infection rates low is to keep vaccinating.

Questions to ask your doctor

• Why does my child need to be vaccinated?
• What are the possible side effects of the vaccination?
• What do I do if my child experiences a side effect from the vaccine?
• What happens if my child doesn’t get all doses of the recommended vaccines? Will he or she be able to go to daycare or school?
• We missed a vaccination. Can my child still get it late?
• Are there new vaccines that aren’t on the immunization schedules for kids?
• What should I do if I don’t have health insurance, or my insurance doesn’t cover vaccinations?
• What vaccinations do I need as an adult?
• Why do some people insist they became sick after getting the flu vaccine?

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Vaccines & Immunizations

Last Updated: August 10, 2023

This article was contributed by familydoctor.org editorial staff.

Copyright © American Academy of Family Physicians

This information provides a general overview and may not apply to everyone. Talk to your family doctor to find out if this information applies to you and to get more information on this subject.

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There are plenty of moral reasons to be vaccinated – but that doesn’t mean it’s your ethical duty

Director of the Master of Bioethics degree program at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University

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Travis N. Rieder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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With the news that all U.S. adults are now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the holy grail of infectious disease mitigation – herd immunity – feels tantalizingly close. If enough people take the vaccine, likely at least 70% of the population, disease prevalence will slowly decline and most of us will safely get back to normal. But if not enough people get vaccinated, COVID-19 could stick around indefinitely.

The urgency of reaching that milestone has led some to claim that individuals have a civic duty or moral obligation to get vaccinated.

As a moral philosopher who has written on the nature of obligation in other contexts, I want to explore how the seemingly straightforward ethics of vaccine choice is in fact rather complex.

The simple argument

The discussion of whether or not one should take the COVID-19 vaccine is often framed in terms of individual self-interest: The benefits outweigh the risk, so you should do it.

That’s not a moral argument.

Most people likely believe that others have wide latitude in determining how they care for their own health, so it can be permissible to engage in risky activities – such as motorcycling or base jumping – even when it’s not in one’s interest. Whether one should get vaccinated, however, is a moral issue because it affects others, and in a couple of ways.

First, effective vaccines are expected to decrease not only rates of infection but also rates of virus transmission . This means that getting the vaccine can protect others from you and contribute to the population reaching herd immunity.

Second, high disease prevalence allows for more genetic mutation of a virus, which is how new variants arise. If enough people aren’t vaccinated quickly, new variants may develop that are more infectious, are more dangerous or evade current vaccines.

The straightforward ethical argument, then, says: Getting vaccinated isn’t just about you. Yes, you have the right to take risks with your own safety. But as the British philosopher John Stuart Mill argued in 1859, your freedom is limited by the harm it could do to others. In other words, you do not have the right to risk other people’s health, and so you are obligated to do your part to reduce infection and transmission rates.

It’s a plausible argument. But the case is rather more complicated.

Individual action, collective good

The first problem with the argument above is that it moves from the claim that “My freedom is limited by the harm it would cause others” to the much more contentious claim that “My freedom is limited by very small contributions my action might make to large, collective harms.”

Refusing to be vaccinated does not violate Mill’s harm principle , as it does not directly threaten some particular other with significant harm. Rather, it contributes a very small amount to a large, collective harm.

Since no individual vaccination achieves herd immunity or eliminates genetic mutation, it is natural to wonder: Could we really have a duty to make such a very small contribution to the collective good?

A version of this problem has been well explored in the climate ethics literature, since individual actions are also inadequate to address the threat of climate change. In that context, a well-known paper argues that the answer is “no”: There is simply no duty to act if your action won’t make a meaningful difference to the outcome.

Others, however, have explored a variety of ways to rescue the idea that individuals must not contribute to collective harms.

One strategy is to argue that small individual actions may actually make a difference to large collective effects, even if it’s difficult to see.

For instance: Although it appears that an individual getting vaccinated doesn’t make a significant difference to the outcome, perhaps that is just the result of uncareful moral mathematics. One’s chance of saving a life by reducing infection or transmission is very small, but saving a life is very valuable. The expected value of the outcome, then, is still high enough to justify taking it to be a moral requirement.

Another strategy concedes that individual actions don’t make a meaningful difference to large, structural problems, but this doesn’t mean morality must be silent with regard to those actions. Considerations of fairness , virtue and integrity all might recommend taking individual action toward a collective goal – even if that action did not by itself make a difference.

In addition, these and other considerations can provide reasons to act , even if they don’t imply an obligation to act.

The contours of obligation

There is yet another challenge in justifying an obligation to get vaccinated, which has to do with the very nature of obligations.

Obligations are requirements on actions, and, as such, those actions often seem demandable by members of the moral community. If a person is obligated to donate to charity, then other members of the community have the moral standing to demand a percentage of their income. That money is owed to others.

The relevant question here, then, is: Are there moral grounds to demand another person get vaccinated?

Philosopher Margaret Little has argued that very intimate actions, such as sex and gestation – the continuation of a pregnancy – are not demandable. In my own work, I’ve suggested that this is also true for deciding how to form a family – for example, adopting a child versus procreating. The intimacy of the actions, I argue, make it the case that no one is entitled to them. Someone can ask you for sex, and there are good reasons to adopt rather than procreate; but no one in the community has the moral standing to demand that you do either. These sorts of examples suggest that particularly intimate actions are not the appropriate targets of obligation.

Is getting vaccinated intimate? While it may not appear so at first blush, it involves having a substance injected into your body, which is a form of bodily intimacy. It requires allowing another to puncture the barrier between your body and the world. In fact, most medical procedures are the sort of thing that it seems inappropriate to demand of someone, as individuals have unilateral moral authority over what happens to their bodies.

The argument presented here objects to intimate duties because they seem too invasive. However, even if members of the moral community don’t have the standing to demand that others vaccinate, they are not required to stay silent; they may ask, request or entreat, based on very good reasons. And of course, no one is required to interact with those who decline.

I am certainly not trying to convince anyone that it’s OK not to get vaccinated. Indeed, the arguments throughout indicate, I think, that there is overwhelming reason to get vaccinated. But reasons – even when overwhelming – don’t constitute a duty, and they don’t make an action demandable.

Acting as though the moral case is straightforward can be alienating to those who disagree. And minimizing the moral stakes when we ask others to have a substance injected into their body can be disrespectful. A much better way, I think, is to engage others rather than demand from them, even if the force of reason ends up clearly on one side.

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Benefits of Getting A COVID-19 Vaccine

There are many benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

• Prevents serious illness: COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States  are safe and effective  at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
• A safer way to build protection: Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.
• Offers added protection: COVID-19 vaccines can  offer added protection to people who had COVID-19, including protection against being hospitalized from a new infection.

How to be best protected: As with vaccines for other diseases, people are  best protected when they  stay up to date .

COVID-19 Vaccines Protect Your Health

COVID 19-vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying. Vaccination remains the safest strategy for avoiding hospitalizations, long-term health outcomes, and death.

What You Can Do Now to Prevent Severe Illness, Hospitalization, and Death

Use Vaccines.gov  – to find a COVID-19 vaccine near you.

CDC recommends everyone aged 5 years and older get 1 updated COVID-19 vaccine . Children aged 6 months – 4 years may need more than 1 dose of updated COVID-19 to stay up to date . People aged 65 years and older who received 1 dose of any updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax) should receive 1 additional dose of an updated COVID-19 vaccine at least 4 months after the previous updated dose. For more Novavax information, click or tap here .

Severe Illness

COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in preventing the most severe outcomes from a COVID-19 infection.

Myocarditis is a condition where the heart becomes inflamed in response to an infection or some other trigger. Myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination is rare. This study shows that patients with COVID-19 had nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with patients who did not have COVID-19 .

Hospitalization

COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent you from becoming hospitalized if you do get infected with COVID-19.

COVID-19 vaccines can help prevent you from dying if you do get infected with COVID-19.

COVID-19 Vaccination is a Safer, More Reliable Way to Build Protection

Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccination helps protect people by creating an immune response without the potentially severe illness or post-COVID conditions that can be associated with COVID-19 infection.

• Getting sick with COVID-19 can cause severe illness or death, even in children, but it is not possible to determine who will experience mild or severe illness from COVID-19 infection.
• People may have long-term health issues after having COVID-19. Even people who do not have symptoms when they are first infected with COVID-19 can experience long-term health problems, also known as long COVID or post-COVID conditions .
• Complications can appear after mild or severe COVID-19, or after multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) .

While people can get some protection from having COVID-19, the level and length of that protection varies, especially as  COVID-19 variants continue to emerge .

• Immunity (protection) from infection can vary depending on how mild or severe someone’s illness was and their age.
• Immunity from infection decreases over time.

Importantly, there is no antibody test  available that can reliably determine if a person is protected from further infection.

After vaccination, continue to follow all current prevention measures recommended by CDC based on latest COVID-19 hospital admission levels. Learn more about protecting your family from COVID-19.

• Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines
• Frequently Asked Questions about COVID-19 Vaccination
• COVID-19 Vaccines for People Who Would Like to Have a Baby

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Guest Essay

Young People Do Not Need Shaming to Get Vaccinated

By Rainesford Stauffer and Abdullah Shihipar

Ms. Stauffer is a freelance writer and the author of “An Ordinary Age,” a book about young adulthood. Mr. Shihipar is a public health researcher at Brown University School of Public Health.

Though young people in the United States are less likely to experience severe illness or death from the coronavirus, they’ve made substantial sacrifices to prevent its spread. They experienced disproportionate job loss and loss of loved ones . Many had to forgo traditional milestones of young adulthood, like graduations, proms and moving out on their own.

They are now being asked to make a much smaller sacrifice — getting vaccinated. And yet data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that young people ages 18 to 24 have the lowest rates of vaccination among adults, with 44 percent fully vaccinated. Even in states like Vermont , where vaccine coverage is high, this group has the lowest rates of vaccination compared with older age groups.

After such an awful year, the fact that younger people are less likely to embrace a simple measure to end the pandemic faster has puzzled experts and commentators alike, many of whom have argued that young adults generally feel invincible . Recently, in a video with the singer Olivia Rodrigo, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said one factor in vaccine hesitancy among young people is that they “ feel invulnerable. ”

But the reasons vaccination rates are lagging in this group are more complex than that.

The idea that young adulthood is a responsibility-free time that cultivates feelings of invincibility skims over realities. Unemployment rates for young people in the United States were high before the pandemic, but unemployment among workers ages 16 to 24 increased to 24.4 percent in spring 2020 from 8.4 percent in spring 2019. Young people are also stressed: One study found 54 percent of people 18 to 25 reported symptoms of anxiety and depression during the pandemic, and their rates of mental health challenges exceeded all other adult age categories.

“While considered a monolithic group, young adults’ experiences are shaped by inequality which manifests as differentially distributed resources leading to disparate experiences,” said Dalal Katsiaficas, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

A survey conducted by the C.D.C. found that people 18 to 24 were the least likely to report getting a Covid-19 vaccine and the most likely to report being unsure about getting vaccinated. Similar trends were seen among people without insurance, Black adults and people with lower household incomes — and there is significant overlap among all these groups. Young people have higher rates of being uninsured and are more likely to live in poverty than other adult age groups. Yet leaders and health experts often argue that young people don’t feel that they need a shot, rather than acknowledge that they face significant barriers to getting one. Hesitancy and barriers can reinforce each other, with barriers becoming more salient if one is unsure about needing the vaccine.

Though the C.D.C. recommends that companies give employees paid leave needed for vaccine recovery, it’s not required. Given that an estimated 24.3 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds in the United States are working in low-wage jobs , they are less likely to have paid sick leave.

With young adults often taking on the responsibilities of supporting their families, the ramifications of lost wages can disrupt the lives of many people beyond just them, Dr. Katsiaficas argued. “How can we expect young adults to prioritize something that could cost them so much when they have been consistently deprioritized from receiving benefits from our social safety net?” she said.

During the pandemic, the share of young adults without health insurance has increased, to 22.8 percent in 2020 from 14.3 percent in 2018. Though Covid vaccines are free, there’s a common misconception that they are not — which is not surprising, considering many vaccine providers ask for insurance information when people sign up for a shot.

What about young adults who don’t face structural barriers to vaccination? Their choice not to be vaccinated may not necessarily reflect irrational feelings of invincibility. When vaccine prioritization was debated last year , some academics and labor advocates argued that health officials should put younger essential workers, who risk exposure on the job, near the front of the line. Younger people are disproportionately people of color and are more likely to live in multigenerational homes. Instead, the United States prioritized early vaccination recipients mostly by age (aside from health care workers) , leaving many young people with jobs or disabilities without protection from the virus for months. The message suggested that exposed or not, young people could afford to wait because they are at lower risk.

Young people do not need shaming to get vaccinated. They need their concerns to be addressed and their barriers reduced. The Biden administration could expand the Covid-19 Community Corps and hire young people across the country to do its door-to-door outreach and expand in-home vaccinations ; they can take the vaccine to workplaces and schools and work with organizers who successfully engaged young people during the 2020 elections and boosted turnout by engaging and organizing them year-round on issues that are important to them.

Young people should also have access to tailored information that addresses concerns about side effects and safety in detail. The C.D.C. survey shows a top reason people under 40 say they are unsure about getting vaccinated is that they’re concerned about potential side effects. Many also say they don’t have enough information about the safety of the vaccines.

A mandate that all employers provide vaccination sick leave would allow young people to take time off. A recent KFF poll showed that the vaccination rate was higher among workers whose employers provided them with paid time off.

If the government wants young people to get the vaccine faster, it needs to make doing so easier and take the vaccine to them. These solutions may seem to target more than just young people, but that’s the point. The barriers young people face to get vaccinated are not inherent to their age. It is just that they are equipped with fewer resources to tackle them.

Rainesford Stauffer ( @Rainesford ) is a freelance writer and the author of “ An Ordinary Age ,” a book about the professional and personal pressures facing young adults. Abdullah Shihipar ( @ashihipar ) is a writer and public health researcher who directs narrative projects and policy impact initiatives at the People, Place and Health Collective at the Brown University School of Public Health.

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Talk with a healthcare professional about vaccines recommended for you and your family

Updated July 2023

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Essay: Vaccination is key to beat COVID-19

Now that COVID-19 vaccines have been developed the question becomes, should I get the vaccine?

While most Rochesterians will get vaccinated , about 30% stated that they would not get the vaccine or were unsure that they would. Underlying diseases, allergies and lack of knowledge on long-term effects were some of the reasons why people were unsure or unwilling to get the vaccine.

More: NY expected to get 170,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses Dec. 15. What to know about who gets it

Here are answers to why getting vaccinated is key to beating COVID-19 and helping us move into a post-pandemic world:

What exactly are the COVID-19 candidate vaccines?

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine candidates are messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, and considered to be new technology. While mRNA vaccines have never been utilized before, a decade's worth of work and research has gone into this technology to make it efficient and safe for humans.

The AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate is an adenovirus-based vaccine. The only other adenovirus-based vaccine that has gained FDA approval is the recent Ebola vaccine produced by Merck. Adenovirus was originally isolated from chimpanzees and modified so that it no longer could replicate within human cells, meaning that it could no longer cause a cold. 

What is mRNA?

Most cells have an in depth, very detailed code book which is the DNA. The final product of this code book would be the physical products, proteins, made by the code book. mRNA in this case, would be the summary of the code book, where all the unnecessary words are taken out. In terms of an mRNA vaccine, the mRNA would be the very small, concise and specific code for a part of the virus that your cells would make.

Production of this small part of the virus would trigger an immune reaction, allowing for your body to create the antibodies needed against the virus without every introducing the virus itself into your body. Most importantly, your body would never create the entire COVID-19 virus because of the vaccine.

How do the vaccine candidates work?

Both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine candidates function the same. They introduce mRNA into your cells that produces a protein "spike" that is found on the surface of the virus. Your cells then read the code for this protein and produce it.

Once the “spike” proteins are produced, your immune system reacts to this foreign object and trains itself to remove the intruder by producing antibodies.

The AstraZeneca vaccine candidate also functions similarly. Instead of asking your cells to produce the spike protein, the adenovirus itself contains that protein. Once introduced to your system, the adenovirus containing the spike protein triggers the immune system to create antibodies so that it can fight against the slight insult to the immune system.

In both cases, once your immune system has made the antibody against the “spike” protein, it retains memory of this and can re-produce the same antibodies needed to fight the virus if you were ever exposed to the actual virus.

Isn’t it bad for your cells to do this long term though?

Long term, most likely. However, the beauty of mRNA that is introduced into your system is that it’s very fragile and has a one-time use typically. Your cells would make the protein “spike” and then the mRNA would be degraded, so your cells would never make the “spike” again.

What about long-term effects?

Long term effects and how long the vaccines will provide immunity are unknown at this point. However, initial data has shown that there are minimal initial effects to the vaccine thus far. The symptoms that were seen, such as a sore arm or feeling unwell for a few days, are typical reactions to vaccines when first given and is a response of your body cranking up productivity to fight against the intrusion.

Long-term effects of the vaccine will be made available once enough time has passed, but generally there is little to fear.

Should I get the vaccine even if I’m unsure or I don’t want to?

Yes, absolutely and emphatically yes. 

The science behind the vaccines are sound and initial data suggest that there are no long-term effects to be majorly concerned about. Transparency in science is key and as long as vaccine producers are transparent there is nothing to fear. 

Nazish Jeffery is a Rochester native who is pursuing her Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Rochester. She is president of the UR Science Policy Initiative.

Here’s What Will Actually Convince People to Get Vaccinated

O ne of evolution’s cleverest tricks was giving us a sense of shame. It’s a miserable feeling—low, humbling, publicly discomfiting—but it’s supposed to be: if you do something lousy you ought to feel something lousy, so you don’t do it again.

In theory, when so many of the strategies for beating the COVID-19 pandemic depend on abiding by social distancing and other rules, shaming people who don’t ought to be a powerful way to bring us back in line. But increasingly, experts believe, the opposite is true. “The thinking has been that the more you shame people the more they will obey,” says Giovanni Travaglino, an assistant professor of social psychology at Kent University. “But this turns out to be absolutely wrong.”

Last month, Travaglino and Chanki Moon, an assistant professor of psychology at Leeds Beckett University, published a paper in Frontiers in Psychology that threw the ineffectiveness of shaming into relief. They assembled nearly 1,900 people from the U.S., Italy and South Korea—choosing those countries on the basis of their differing sense of the collective culture, with the U.S. judged the most individualistic, South Korea the most group-oriented and Italy in between. The subjects were asked to rate how ashamed or guilty they’d feel if they contracted COVID-19. They were also asked to rate how often they obey guidelines like social distancing and how likely they’d be to tell friends, acquaintances and health authorities if they tested positive. In all three countries, the higher the level of shame and guilt people felt over falling ill, the less likely they were to play it safe and to report their COVID-19 status.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, the antivaccine movement has long been a threat to public health, and many pro-vaccine messages have been designed to shame adherents. A December story in the U.K.’s Metro featured the headline “People think anti-vaxxers are ‘stupid and selfish.'” Attention-grabbing, maybe, but counterproductive. “It’s hard to get people to act in a cooperative manner when you approach them that way,” says Travaglino. “It’s associated with subordination to authority, and people don’t like that.”

A new TIME/Harris Poll survey similarly suggests individual authority figures aren’t very effective at convincing vaccine skeptics.

Of U.S. adults who had recently been vaccinated, only 32% said they were influenced by a local official reaching out directly via email, phone or mail. Much more effective, it seems, are appeals to people’s individual needs and desires. Some 52% of those polled said they got the vaccine because they wanted to travel, for example. The people around us also play a major role, with 56% of respondents saying they got vaccinated after a friend or family member did, and 59% saying they were influenced merely by having a conversation with such a closely connected person. And despite our ostensible mistrust in the media, 63% said they were influenced by news reports about people who had already been vaccinated.

Indeed, past research shows value in appealing to us through personal stories. In a 2015 study published in the PNAS , volunteers took a survey on their attitudes about vaccines and were then divided into three groups, each given one of three things to read: material showing that autism and vaccines are not related; a paragraph of a mother describing her child’s bout with measles; and material on an unrelated science topic. When the subjects took the vaccine survey again, all were more pro-vaccine than before, but the ones who read the mother’s account were dramatically more so, with an increase five times as great as that of the group that had read the material on autism and six times that of the control group.

Personal accounts can have a negative impact too. A new study published in PLOS ONE, by researchers from the University of Illinois and the Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that subjects who saw a video clip of Dr. Anthony Fauci talking about the safety and effectiveness of the measles vaccine came away from it more favorably disposed to vaccination overall. But the positive effect was diminished when they saw another video clip first, of a mother describing the severe rash one of her children developed after receiving the vaccine. The solution, the paper concluded, is not for the media to censor such accounts but to precede them with real-world data on the minimal risks and the considerable benefits of vaccines.

What doesn’t work, clearly, is pointing fingers and casting blame and shame. It’s the virus that’s the enemy, after all, not the people it infects.

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Write to Jeffrey Kluger at [email protected]

These are the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear

Successful strategies showcase celebrities such as dolly parton and tyler perry, but also local doctors, pastors and neighbors.

With all Americans 16 and over now eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine, health-care workers and public health officials are turning their attention to the approximately one-third of Americans who say that they are on the fence or that they do not want to get vaccinated.

No single message will persuade everyone, but experts say a combination of strategies is already convincing reluctant people that getting vaccinated is for them.

Here are some of those strategies, from the broadest to the most personal.

Make vaccination visible

For any strategy to work, people first have to perceive vaccination as a normal part of life.

That is why public health officials, nonprofit groups and major brands are collaborating on nationwide public service campaigns and partnering with celebrities to make vaccination more visible.

The model for the celebrity shot dates to 1956, when few teenagers were getting the year-old polio vaccine. Two critical things happened that fall to reverse the trend.

First, 21-year-old Elvis Presley got the shot in front of cameras before “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Second, the March of Dimes launched a wildly successful peer-to-peer campaign among teen social groups. In short, it leveraged the cool kids, but it may not have gotten the cool kids without the King.

The wide range of celebs touting coronavirus vaccines includes musicians and actors (such as Elton John , Britney Spears and Lin-Manuel Miranda ), sports personalities ( Patrick Mahomes, Richard Petty , Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ), WWE stars and Fox News personalities. “Don’t be such a chicken-squat,” chided country music icon Dolly Parton in a video as she got an injection of the Moderna vaccine, which she helped finance. “Afterwards, I felt like superwoman,” Oprah Winfrey wrote.

[ Could Beyoncé do for coronavirus vaccine what Elvis did for polio? ]

Tyler Perry was vaccinated live on a BET special. TV shows as varied as “South Park” and “This Is Us” have incorporated vaccinations into their story lines.

Broad public service announcements, however, inevitably turn some people off. One person may find Google’s “ Get back to what you love ” message poignant, while another finds it manipulative.

“No national ad campaign is ever going to be as effective … as people who look like you and come from your community saying: ‘This is important. It’s the right thing for us,’” said Kelly Moore of the vaccine education group Immunization Action Coalition.

It’s why the polio campaign needed both Elvis and the teens next door.

Have nationally trusted messengers recommend it

The opinions of our leaders matter, whether that is the president or a prominent public health official such as Anthony S. Fauci , the nation’s top infectious-disease expert.

“When the people in the front of the room — political leaders and so on, people in charge of vaccination — speak up in favor of vaccination, confidence rises and stays high,” said University of North Carolina researcher Noel Brewer, who studies the intersection of public health and human behavior. “When the government and the folks in charge of vaccination do not speak in favor of it, confidence falls.”

Both of those scenarios have played out since the first vaccine became available in December .

Although President Donald Trump led the initiative that sped vaccines to the market, he was vaccinated privately in January before leaving office and did not disclose it or encourage his supporters to get a shot until March . (Vice President Mike Pence and his wife were vaccinated on television in December.)

It was a puzzling missed opportunity to celebrate a big achievement, Brewer said, “and we see the remnants of that in today’s society.” According to an Economist-YouGov poll released this week, 30 percent of Republicans said they would not get vaccinated, compared with 22 percent of adults overall.

President Biden , Vice President Harris and all other living former presidents have rolled up their sleeves in public.

While politicians’ cheerleading can be useful for some, it won’t convince everyone. A focus group of vaccine-hesitant Trump voters last month said pitches from politicians — Trump included — were not persuasive.

It is the medical professionals who can best convey the possible risks of both the vaccines and the disease to a jittery public, Moore said.

This is why many are still listening to Fauci.

“He established trust by saying things people didn’t want to hear when they needed to be said, then also saying encouraging things,” Moore said. “There is nothing more easily lost in this process and nothing more precious in the process than that real trust.”

But not everyone likes what he has to say, either. This week in a different focus group, vaccine-hesitant Trump voters said they do not want to hear from Fauci.

[ ‘We want to be educated, not indoctrinated,’ say Trump voters wary of coronavirus vaccination ]

Make vaccination come with privileges

Of the many strategies Brewer and his colleagues explored in a 2017 study on the psychology of vaccine uptake, one of the most effective was simply requiring it.

For some people, being allowed to travel to see the grandkids, to take a cruise or to return to the office or school is enough of an incentive to persuade them to get vaccinated. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in late March, 7 percent of respondents said that they would get a vaccine “only if required.”

However, that step cannot occur before people believe vaccinations are safe.

“If there’s not some community-wide level of confidence in the vaccine,” Brewer said, “policymakers cannot implement all of these super-effective approaches without receiving a great deal of blowback from the general public.”

In the Economist-YouGov poll, 61 percent of respondents thought the Moderna vaccine was very safe or somewhat safe, compared with 59 percent for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 42 percent for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Pushback against “vaccine passports” has already begun in the United States, even though the Biden administration has said it does not plan to create them . But private businesses such as cruise lines, sports teams and others are already beginning to require proof of vaccinations.

[ 'Vaccine passports' are on the way, but developing them won't be easy ]

“Being confident in the vaccine and deciding to get vaccinated — those need to be voluntary, personal decisions,” said Elisabeth Wilhelm, a vaccine confidence strategist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We ask people to think very, very carefully when they talk about incentives, whether it’s a bag of rice for your kid getting vaccinated in Nigeria or getting a coronavirus vaccine in your workplace in the United States. It is a lever that can be used — it just should not be the first that you pull on.”

[ Everything travelers need to know about vaccine passports ]

Tailor the message to the audience

Traditionally, public health messages — from smoking cessation to seat-belt campaigns — have been broadcast widely, on billboards, in public service announcements and on popular TV shows. That one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work well for vaccines, experts say, because pregnant women, for example, probably have concerns very different from those of Republican men or Latino immigrants.

“When it comes to vaccine hesitancy, it is more like personalized medicine,” said Christopher Graves, founder of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science at Ogilvy Consulting, “more customized to specific worldviews and cultural filters.”

And unlike conventional vaccine messaging, which aims to persuade parents to get children vaccinated, the coronavirus messages are aimed at persuading adults to get their shots.

“Respecting their autonomy is important,” Moore said.

As is adapting the message to the recipient.

People who say they prize individual choice are more likely to be convinced by messages emphasizing that getting vaccinated increases your freedom to get together with friends and colleagues, experts say.

Gabriel Salguero, founder of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition , said he is using biblical references in his sermons to quell the fears of some Christians who falsely believe the vaccines contain microchips or fetal tissue or are an ominous sign of the End Times.

Successful messaging isn’t only about finding the right words. Olajide Williams, a Columbia University neurologist, uses music and art in the Hip Hop Public Health program to reach communities of color.

And for those who are skeptical of the science, data can make a real difference: 95 percent of doctors who have been offered a vaccine have taken it — a figure that helped turn around 19 vaccine-hesitant Trump voters who took part in a two-hour virtual focus group .

“The one group everyone trusts is doctors,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers , a nonprofit that coordinates with states to control vaccine-preventable diseases.

Have friendly faces in familiar places

While many people are eager to sign up for mass vaccination sites, others are unable or unwilling to take a place in line, for reasons such as a lack of transportation or worries about showing up at sites where staffers are often dressed in uniform.

[ Lack of health services and transportation impede access to vaccine in communities of color ]

When it comes to relieving those worries, nothing beats a friendly face in a familiar place, say experts who have documented the value of enlisting primary-care physicians, community leaders and pastors. It’s better still if the shot can be given right there, in their office or sanctuary.

“It’s one thing for a pastor to say it, another to have a pop-up vaccination site in the church,” Wilhelm said.

In Maryland, the Health Advocates In-Reach and Research Initiative (HAIR) is using barbershops and beauty salons to debunk misinformation within the Black community.

Ideally — and particularly if an easily stored, single-shot vaccine were widely available — doctors could offer shots during regular appointments, just as they do the flu shot.

“It is done as a matter of routine, rather than a big issue,” said former CDC director Tom Frieden, who has advocated for primary-care physicians to play a bigger role.

Messengers need to be honest about risks, communicating how they compare with the benefits, said Moore, who advocates for transparency with issues such as the rare but worrisome clotting associated with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Federal officials paused the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine last week.

“If you hedge, you can undermine the entire vaccination campaign in a moment if you appear to be covering up,” Moore said.

And trusted spaces exist on social media, where small groups can engage in Q&A sessions or Facebook live streams.

Meeting people where they are could even involve going door-to-door, as in a political campaign or with the census.

The key to getting more people vaccinated, said UNC’s Brewer, is “to make it easier.”

Make vaccination routine in peer groups and social networks

Seeing Elvis or Fauci getting vaccinated is helpful. But most people who are considering getting the shot want the answer to a straightforward question.

“Are people like me taking this vaccine, and how are they doing?” said Bruce Gellin, president of global immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute .

You are more likely to roll up your sleeve, Gellin and other experts say, if you’ve talked to your neighbor, co-worker, cousin or golf buddy about having done so.

That’s why the Philadelphia Department of Health began building connections with vaccine role models people may spot in their neighborhoods rather than on TV or at the ballpark, looking to block captains, pastors and barbers to lead the way.

“They are people where someone will say: ‘I know this guy. I’ve seen them on the block,’” said James Garrow, the department’s communications director.

Vaccine experts leverage the peer pressure with other tools, giving out “I’m vaccinated” stickers and buttons, offering selfie opportunities at mass vaccination sites and encouraging people to post their just-vaxxed pictures online to create a sense of solidarity. “Vaxxies” have become one of the defining social media images of 2021.

It’s all about creating links with people where they are — online or in person.

“Don’t mute your crazy uncle,” said the CDC’s Wilhelm. Instead, she said, share your experience with family and friends and talk to them about the advantages of getting a shot — such as new opportunities to get together safely.

The bottom line, Wilhelm said, is that vaccination is contagious.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.

About this story

Design, development and animation by Chloe Meister. Graphics by Tim Meko. Illustrations by The Washington Post using images from iStock, AP (Presley, Parton), Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post (Fauci) and IAC (vaccine button).

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The Ethics of Mandatory Vaccination

Should organizations require that people be vaccinated against covid-19.

Posted April 26, 2021 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Rights to autonomy and privacy need to be balanced against the avoidance of harms.
• The harms caused by COVID-19 may be sufficient to justify some limitations on personal freedom.
• Mandatory vaccines against COVID-19 are justified by the infections and deaths they prevent.

Dozens of American colleges and universities are requiring students who want to return for fall classes to be vaccinated against COVID-19 . Many other organizations are also considering mandatory vaccines for their employees: for example, requiring workers in long-term care homes to be vaccinated. In Israel, people who have been vaccinated can receive a “green pass” that allows them entry to restaurants, theaters, and other gatherings.

Critics of mandatory vaccines assail them as violations of fundamental human rights to autonomy and privacy. Medical ethics has long upheld the right of people to refuse medical treatments they do not want. Forcing people to get vaccinated violates their freedom. The right to privacy is an extension of the right to autonomy because forced disclosure of information such as vaccination status allows others to take one's freedom away.

However, the rights to freedom and privacy are never absolute. If you drive at double the speed limit down a crowded street, the police may stop you, demand to see your driver’s license, and give you a dangerous driving charge that can land you in jail. Violations of your freedom and privacy are justified because of the high probability that your behavior will cause great harm to others. The avoidance of harms and the provision of benefits justify many other limitations on personal freedom and privacy, including laws against murder, income tax, vaccinations for schoolchildren, antipollution laws, and gun control.

For COVID-19, we have to ask whether the potential harms from disease spread are sufficiently great to justify mandatory vaccines. I think the answer is a strong yes. COVID-19 has already killed more than 3 million people worldwide, and more than 100 million others have suffered from infections that caused misery ranging from a couple of weeks to more than a year. Fortunately, extensive vaccination in countries like Israel and the United Kingdom is making it clear that vaccination is an effective means of reducing this misery. Hence, individuals should feel a moral obligation to get vaccinated for the sake of the general good, as well as for their own good.

Hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccines is partly based on legitimate concerns about new drugs that have had a few signs of trouble, such as blood clots, but thorough risk-benefit analyses have found that these risks are far outweighed by the benefits of avoiding the disease. Much vaccine hesitancy results from misinformation spread by unprincipled politicians and sellers of alternative medicines. Overcoming denial of the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines requires cognitive and social interventions, including a clear presentation of the substantial evidence of vaccine efficacy, a debunking of contrary claims, and an empathic understanding of why some people are opposed to vaccines.

Some people feel strongly that it should be entirely up to them whether they get the COVID-19 vaccine, but feelings can be misinformation when they are based on false beliefs or misguided values. The functioning of universities and other organizations depends on keeping people healthy, so the requirement that all students should be vaccinated is a perfectly legitimate case where the avoidance of harm gets priority over personal autonomy. Even clearer is the mandate that health care workers get vaccinated so that they do not risk infecting the people they look after. Of course, accommodations can be made for people who have health problems that prevent vaccination.

Requiring a green pass or vaccination passport strikes me as a minor infringement on privacy compared to the great benefits of opening up social activities and travel while lowering health risks. One concern about such documentation is that it can lead to discrimination against people who have not had the opportunity to get vaccinated. The best way of avoiding such discrimination is to ensure that vaccines are made available to all people throughout each country and worldwide.

Thagard, P. (2021). The cognitive science of COVID-19: Acceptance, denial, and belief change. Methods.

Paul Thagard, Ph.D. , is a Canadian philosopher and cognitive scientist. His latest book, published by Columbia University Press, is Falsehoods Fly: Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop It.

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Many Parents Won’t Vaccinate Their Kids. Here’s Why.

Even parents who are enthusiastic about the vaccines may not want their young children to be first in line.

The announcement that the Pfizer vaccine appears to work in children ages 5 to 11 is welcome news for many families across the United States. Parents who expect their children’s classrooms to soon be full of vaccinated students shouldn’t be overly optimistic, though. Many moms and dads will wait to get their kids immunized, if they do at all—and that includes those who are vaccinated themselves.

Although about two-thirds of adults and 83 percent of elderly Americans are fully vaccinated , the percentage of vaccinated adolescents is much lower. The Pfizer vaccine has been authorized for 12-to-17-year-olds since May, but only about half of kids ages 16 and 17 are fully vaccinated. Only 42 percent of those ages 12 to 15 are.

Perri Klass: I’m a pediatrician. Get your child vaccinated.

Parents tend to be skeptical of new vaccines. Whenever one is introduced, many of them are initially hesitant to adopt it. Take the varicella vaccine, for instance. Approved by the FDA in 1995 , it protects against the virus that causes chickenpox, an extremely contagious, common, and unpleasant childhood infection. Even though the vaccine was highly effective and showed few side effects, uptake levels were initially low, with only 34 percent of eligible adolescents fully immunized by 2008 . In my experience with my own patients, parents were concerned about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy, and weren’t convinced that chickenpox was a serious enough illness to warrant a vaccination. Immunization rates did improve over time. By 2018 , about 90 percent of children had been vaccinated. But if history repeats itself, people hoping for parents’ speedy uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines may need to reset their expectations.

Most American parents of small children are between the ages of 25 and 39. Only 55 percent of them are fully vaccinated. We can expect that parents who have chosen not to vaccinate themselves are not likely to vaccinate their children quickly, if at all. We can even expect that some who did get vaccinated themselves will still be reluctant, at first, to immunize their children. This is supported by the current difference in the vaccination rates of parents and adolescents. Even parents who are enthusiastic about the vaccines may not want their children to be first in line.

Research bears this out. The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health found that across the United States , more than half of parents of children ages 3 to 11 said they were unlikely to have them vaccinated against COVID-19. A Kaiser Family Foundation national survey found that only 26 percent of parents would vaccinate their 5-to-11-year-olds right away.

Colleagues of mine at the Indiana University Fairbanks School for Public Health went further. They surveyed more than 10,000 parents across Indiana to see whether they planned to vaccinate their children and how they were thinking about it. More than 40 percent of parents of elementary- and middle-school children said they definitely would not get their children vaccinated against COVID, or would do so only if it were required by their schools or for other activities.

Read: Why is it taking so long to get vaccines for kids?

Ironically, more parents (60 percent) said they would not vaccinate their children if someone else in their household had already been infected with COVID-19. This could be because they assume that their children would have developed some natural immunity from the exposure, even if they did not get sick. Or perhaps the parent themselves had only a mild case, and therefore believes that COVID-19 isn’t dangerous enough to warrant vaccines for their children. This same type of thinking happens with influenza. Because most people don’t die from the flu, some adults don’t take it seriously enough and choose not to immunize their children.

The IU survey also found that roughly 15 percent of parents would “wait and see” how things went. This cohort is a good model for the “malleable middle” of parents, who might be nudged toward vaccination. Some of them said they might be motivated by more evidence of the vaccines’ safety and effectiveness as large numbers of other children get their shots. Others said they would be moved by recommendations from a trusted health-care provider, or by the vaccination of other children in their social circles.

Generally, the main reason children are vaccinated against other diseases is that schools mandate vaccines . When vaccines are required for school—as is the case with the varicella vaccine, for instance—vaccination rates increase quickly. When they are not—as is the case with the HPV shots—overall immunization rates stall at lower numbers .

I’ll be surprised if many public schools require the COVID vaccines in the near future. Given that many states are barely enforcing school mask mandates, vaccine mandates for students seem unlikely. A reasonable argument could also be made that although Pfizer’s studies have shown the vaccines to be safe so far, requiring them will be difficult until much more safety data are obtained, as was the case for adults before any mandates went into effect. Any available vaccines will also only be authorized for emergency use, not approved, which will further limit mandates in some areas.

Still, children getting vaccinated as soon as possible is important for their health and that of those they care about. I asked one of the researchers involved in the survey, Nir Menachemi, a professor and the department chair of health policy and management at the IU Fairbanks School for Public Health, what we might do to bring more parents on board. He said, “Parents, especially those on the fence, need different information than parents who already vaccinated their older children. Parents need to hear from their child’s doctor or other experts and peers from within their community that vaccinating against COVID-19 is a good thing. Up until now, most of the messages have come from media outlets, and that is not enough.”

Read: Parents are lying to get their kids vaccinated

That’s one of the key takeaways Menachemi and his team discovered through their work. Parents are used to getting their children vaccinated at their doctor’s office. If we want to persuade them to get their children the COVID vaccines, we will need to use the tools they trust. We have failed to do this again and again throughout the pandemic.

The news is full of stories about parents desperate to vaccinate their young children, some of whom have even resorted to trickery to get it done before they’re eligible. We need to be careful not to let such anecdotes convince us that it will be easier to vaccinate kids than adults. The opposite is likelier true. We need to communicate the value of vaccination to parents before the vaccines are authorized for their younger kids, because immunizing children benefits not just them , but everyone around them too.