Vaccine Facts: Decoding Vaccines by Caroline Ames, NP

There is a lot of misinformation about vaccines on the internet, especially on social media. We know there have been some scary social media posts circulating recently about vaccines. We at Linthicum Pediatrics, in concert with the medical and scientific communities, strongly advise vaccinating your child according to the CDC-recommended schedule to avoid preventable disease and to protect not only your child, but our communities at large. We completely understand how reading these posts may cause anxiety and hesitation so we would like to provide some education and reassurance.

As always, please reach out to your provider with any specific questions or concerns! 

Here are some truths about vaccines: 

• Vaccines are effective at preventing specific bacterial and viral diseases. Not sure what diptheria looks like? That’s because of vaccination! Never crossed your mind that your child could become paralyzed from a polio infection? That’s because of vaccination! Not up worrying at night about your child developing encephalitis (brain damage) following a measles infection? That’s because of vaccination! 

 

• Vaccines introduce proteins to the body which prompt the body to mount it’s own immune response. If your body sees this pathogen in the future, it already “knows” it and can fight it off quickly, often before symptoms even present. We hope vaccination will prevent illness altogether! If symptoms do present (which you probably know can happen with flu and COVID, for example), this immune memory from the vaccine helps to decrease the severity of illness and to prevent serious complications from the illness. 

 

• Vaccines are either “inactivated” or “live”. An inactivated vaccine includes only a portion of a protein or a “killed germ” to expose your immune system and mount specific protection to that antigen. For a live vaccine, the pathogen is “attenuated”, or so significantly weakened or altered that it is not capable of making you sick. Neither type of vaccine will make you sick with the full blown disease they are intended to protect you from. 

 

• Vaccines do NOT cause autism. The data in the initial study suggesting this link was found to be fabricated by the scientist (Jenner) who published the study and was removed from the scientific record. Studies since have shown time and again no association between autism and vaccines, although this has been aggressively studied. If we thought there was even a chance of an association, we would be concerned. We are not. All of the Linthicum Peds providers’ children have been vaccinated fully and according to the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule. 

 

• Have you heard of herd immunity? Vaccinating all eligible children helps protect those not eligible for vaccination from getting sick while also limiting the spread of the pathogen and ideally eradicating the illness (think polio). The actual percentage of protected people needed to reach herd immunity varies for each pathogen. Reasons that someone is ineligible include undergoing chemo, being too young, or having an immune condition that prevents them from mounting an adequate response to vaccinations. Vaccinating our children helps protect those who are the most vulnerable among us. The recent increase in vaccine refusal has caused the various outbreaks of measles that we are seeing in our communities, for example. It is each of our responsibility to help maintain the herd immunity. 

 

• You have likely heard about adjuvants in vaccines - or things added to the vaccine to help your body mount a stronger immune response. These include things like aluminum. Aluminum is in our environment - it is the third most abundant element on the Earth! It is in our soil, food, water, breast milk, formula, soda cans, aluminum foil…The amount of aluminum in vaccines is negligible compared to our environmental exposure (babies will get more aluminum via breast milk than vaccines during their first six months of life) and is important for ensuring an immune response to the vaccine. We know that excessive aluminum is bad for you but the amount in the vaccines is not dangerous. 

Read more about this here: https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum

• Vaccine side effects that you might feel are actually caused by your body’s immune response to the vaccine and not the vaccine itself. These commonly include soreness or redness at the injection site, fatigue, and low-grade fevers and can vary depending on the vaccine. 

Helpful Links 

• https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center
• CDC recommended vaccine schedule: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/index.html