This misconception that vaccines are harmful is yet another major problem that misleads parents into thinking that they should never vaccinate their child. This misconception should not be taken lightly. On December 27, 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that unvaccinated children were 22.2 times more likely to acquire measles and 5.9 times more likely to acquire pertussis (also known as whooping cough) than vaccinated children (Feikin et al. 3145). In a different article titled, Vaccine Verity, author Damaris Christensen says:
If parents' fears over vaccine safety rise, public health officials worry that immunization rates will drop. Such a decline would naturally lead to more cases of disease among the unvaccinated children. Because most vaccines don't provide complete protection against disease in every child, however, even vaccinated children would become more
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The fear and misconception that vaccines are harmful puts not only children at risk, but the future population as well. Many people today might think of measles as a disease of the past because it’s no longer “around”; however, this does not mean that the measles disease is gone forever. A study was done in March of 2016, to evaluate the association between vaccine refusals and the measles epidemic. Scientist evaluated eighteen published measles studies which described 1,416 measles cases and more than half, 56.8%, had no history of measles vaccination. This proves that the phenomenon of vaccine refusal was associated with an increased risk for measles among people who refuse vaccines and among fully vaccinated individuals (Phadke et al.). The Vaccine Liberation Army is fighting a very dangerous battle that will cause more casualties in the end if anti-vaxxers triumph. The VLA’s anti-vaccine propaganda must be stopped before it’s too