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Polio Vaccine Persuasive Speech

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Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” In layman’s terms, when other people are impacted, your rights can be altered. Vaccination is often seen as ambiguous but it is much simpler. There are medical grounds why a portion of people cannot get vaccines, and those should not be ignored. However, we need to increase America’s education of vaccines so they will not be as opposed because they are effective, and without the vaccinations, diseases will return and immunosuppressed patients may become infected.

A multitude of people think we are not in need of vaccines since diseases are rare, or that vaccines never worked, saying that better hygiene and water sanitation deserve the …show more content…

Prior to the 1961 commercial use of the polio vaccine, 16,000 were infected and 1,900 killed yearly. After only a short while, polio had been eradicated in the United States. Additionally, the diphtheria vaccine was developed in the 1930s. Before being developed, twenty-one thousand people were infected yearly, while 1,800 of them were dying. By 2006, diphtheria had been eradicated (Welch, et al). Even if a disease is not completely eradicated, occurrences have dropped dramatically. Before a vaccination was released for rubella, 48,000 were infected and 17 were killed yearly in the US. Since the vaccine has been used regularly, 17 were infected and zero were killed. Alongside rubella, chicken pox numbers have decreased greatly. From four million infected each year to six-hundred thousand, which is an 85% decrease. In deaths from chickenpox alone, there was an 82% decrease (Welch, et al). Since 1924, an estimated 103 million cases of other diseases such as polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis A, diphtheria, and pertussis have been prevented (Welch, et al). Modern-day generations might be opposed to vaccination, but parents in the late 1900s would tell you to get vaccinated any chance you get. They know how it feels to see a loved one go from thriving, to paralyzed or dead within …show more content…

With the large amount of contact and exposure that is in the world today, they would spread far more quickly than they did before vaccines were released. Measles and pertussis have had resurgent streaks within the last five to ten years. From 2000-2013, 15.6 million deaths from measles had been prevented, but in 2013, 145,700 still died from measles. That is equivalent to four hundred deaths per day. Two - thirds of these people were intentionally unvaccinated (Ruderfer). More recently, in 2017, the largest measles outbreak in thirty years came about in Minnesota because of unvaccinated, uneducated Somali - Americans (Get the Shots). This specific outbreak infected 79 people, and eight thousand more were exposed (Sun). Measles was recognized as eradicated in 2000, but outbreaks like these have become typical (Get the Shots). Not only do these diseases harm your body, but also your wallet. In 2008, a measles outbreak in San Diego cost the Department of Public Health over $175,000. A similar outbreak cost $100,000 per case (Ruderfer). Measles seems like it was only prevalent a long time ago, and maybe the worst is behind us. However, pertussis has been a more current issue, as the infection rate did not fall until the 1970s. After the development of the vaccine, the amount of infections had decreased 95% by 1976. More recently, in

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