# Do vaccines prevent retransmission? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 10, 2013, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-vaccines-prevent-retransmission/663089 "2013-07-10T00:01:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-vaccines-prevent-retransmission/663089/21 "2013-07-12T04:24:04Z")
> [@flatout](#): > > This assumption that ‘he’s fine because he’s vaccinated’ is a long way wide of the mark. Lots of vaccinated people catch the disease against which they were vaccinated, a typical childhood vaccine may be 80-90-odd% effective. Even when it is, the disease may still be ‘caught’. As time goes by, efficacy wears off. I caught whooping cough as a child from a friend who had been vaccinated (I hadn’t) and he suffered more, for longer. > > My question is slightly different - if vaccination is as effective as the pharmaceutical industry would like us to believe, why are there the mass panics amongst those whose children are vaccinated, whenever there is an outbreak of virtually harmless measles? Surely they should be feeling smug, knowing their child has been injected? > > The other question is one of why bother in the first place, especially with diseases like measles which not long ago were regarded as harmless? The numbers of children killed and disabled by MMR is actually greater than the numbers killed/disabled after a measles infection. My answer? - perhaps it has something more to do with the billions earned by the industry. This infantile view is enabled only by an incredible inability–or refusal–to understand what vaccination is all about. Worse, if everyone save only a handful vaccinates their children, the most protected class will in fact be those who refused vaccination. This is because mass vaccination will eliminate the disease at the cost of a very small risk to the vaccinated class, and the unvaccinated class will benefit from the disease having been eliminated without taking even that tiny risk of vaccination. When we vaccinate ourselves and our children, we not only minimize serious disease for ourselves, we do a larger service for the health benefit of everyone. I confess a certain (probably inappropriate) smugness that the anti vaccination crowd and their idiotic mantra that some sort of “industry” is in cahoots to dragoon the public into inappropriate care has become so widespread that there is a relatively large cohort of at-risk individuals. The larger that cohort is, the less likely we are to completely eliminate a given disease, and therefore the anti-vax crowd is exposed to a larger–not lesser–risk since the disease can remain endemic. Unfortunately, the actual suffering and endangerment accrues to children of stupid parents and not the parents themselves. I suspect that’s why people holler when there is an outbreak of disease… ---
**Author:** ![Alley\_Dweller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alley_dweller/32/430_2.png) [@Alley\_Dweller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alley_Dweller)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-vaccines-prevent-retransmission/663089/22 "2013-07-12T08:53:34Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > The larger that cohort is, the less likely we are to completely eliminate a given disease, and therefore the anti-vax crowd is exposed to a larger–not lesser–risk since the disease can remain endemic. And if we fail to eliminate the disease, that means that big pharma can look forward to selling vaccines to many generations to come. You know, if any American corporations actually looked beyond the next quarterly report, I would suspect that funding the anti-vax movement was a long term strategy of the big drug companies: Sell a lot of vaccinations, but keep the threat alive for generations to come. The unfortunate problem with vaccines is that they can’t tell you they are working: No light or digital display goes off when a disease-causing organism has been killed off inside your body. Long-term statistical studies on the rate of infection are just not satisfying in our age of instant gratification and immediate feedback. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-vaccines-prevent-retransmission/663089.md?page=1)