Ever since humanity existed, we have experienced a lot of diseases in our path. For example, the bubonic plague, measles, chicken pox, and more. Recently, old diseases have come up again because of a certain type of people: anti-vaxxers. These people think that vaccines that prevent diseases are actually horrible things that are worse than they are useful. Anti-vaxx people all have one main argument, that vaccines are bad, but they all have different reasons for it.

 One of the biggest points they have is that vaccines cause autism. They do not. It has been proven time and time again that they have no ties at all to autism. There are no ingredients in vaccines that cause autism, and there never have been. The reason people actually believe this is because of one man, named Andrew Wakefield. Back in 1998, Wakefield had done a fake scientific study that vaccines are linked to autism. This fake study has caused vaccination rates to go down in the United States and the United Kingdom and has raised the number of people with measles, mumps, which has caused a lot of deaths.

 A certain section of the anti-vaxxer community doesn’t believe that vaccines are harmful, but that they should not be forced to be able to go to school and workplaces. They think that the more personal freedoms we give to our government, the more tyrannical they become. And while I can kind of see what their point is, I think that we should make an exception for this and have it be mandatory for schools and workplaces.

 A big reason why you should vaccinate is that if you carry the disease on you, it can spread to children who have not yet been vaccinated. And there is no point in vaccinating for a disease you already have. Vaccines prevent diseases, they do not cure them. A lot of deaths of children and infants have been provoked by people who do not vaccinate.

 Also, another thing to say is that you cannot depend on your immune system alone to fight diseases. Vaccines strengthen your immune system by putting a very weak and small version of the disease you’re vaccinating against into your body so that when the actual disease comes in, your immune system knows how to counter against it.