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Vaccine-preventable diseases haven’t gone away.
The viruses and bacteria that we vaccinate against and that cause illness and death still exist. Without the protection of vaccines, we will experience more disease outbreaks, more severe illnesses, and more deaths.
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Vaccines will help keep you healthy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends vaccinations through your whole life to protect against many infections. When you skip your vaccines, you leave yourself vulnerable to illnesses such as shingles, pneumococcal disease, influenza, and HPV and hepatitis B, both leading causes of cancer.
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Vaccines are as important to your overall health as diet and exercise.
Like eating healthy foods, exercising, and getting regular check-ups, vaccines play a vital role in keeing you healthy. Vaccines are one of the simplest, most convenient, and safest preventive care measures available.
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Vaccination can mean the difference between life and death.
Vaccine-preventable infections are dangerous. Every year, tens of thousands of US adults die from diseases they could have avoided with vaccination.
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Vaccines are safe.
The US has the best post-licensure surveillance system in the world. That’s why we can say with absolute confidence that our vaccines are extremely safe. There is extraordinarily strong data from many different medical investigators all pointing to that same result. Make no mistake; vaccines are among the safest products in all of medicine.
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Vaccines won’t give you the disease they are designed to prevent.
You cannot “catch” the disease from the vaccine. Some vaccines contain “killed” virus, and it is impossible to get the disease from them. Others have weakened viruses designed to ensure that you cannot catch the disease.
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Young and healthy people can get very sick, too.
Infants and the elderly are at a greater risk for serious infections and complications in many cases, but vaccine-preventable diseases can strike anyone. If you’re young and healthy, getting vaccinated can help you stay that way.
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Vaccine-preventable diseases are expensive.
An average influenza illness can last up to 15 days, translating into five or six missed work days. Adults who get hepatitis A lose an average of one month of work.
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When you get sick, your children, grandchildren and parents are at risk, too.
A vaccine-preventable disease that might make you sick for a week or two could prove deadly for your children, grandchildren, or parents if it spreads to them. When you get vaccinated, you’re protecting yourself and your family. For example, adults are the most common source of pertussis (whooping cough) infection in infants, which is deadly in infants. In 2010 alone, 25 US infants died from whooping cough.
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Your family and coworkers need you.
Each year, millions of Americans get sick from vaccine-preventable diseases, causing them to miss work and leaving them unable to care for those who depend on them, including their children and/or aging parents.
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