The World Health Organization stated that one of the top threats to 2019 was vaccine hesitancy.
President of the Nueces County Medical Society, and Certified Board of Ophthalmologist, Jacob Moore, M.D. wanted to clear the ground on vaccine efficacy. He says in regards to vaccines, there are three illnesses that have shown tremendous strides in the success of vaccines.
One of which is smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980 by the World Health Assembly. Moore says, “people don’t think of smallpox as a deadly disease that killed a third of people who got smallpox, and blinded a third of people that got smallpox.”
Another illness that Moore says has shown vaccines have changed the way we live, is polio. “[Polio] we don’t have a lot of personal experience with in the United States now because the numbers are so much lower,” says Moore, “and it’s likely to be the second disease that we eradicate world-wide.”
Although we may be at the tail-end of flu season, and although the flu strains change every year, Moore believes vaccines have helped control the illness.
“We’re actually at the 100-year anniversary of the influenza pandemic. More people that were killed by Hitler, Mao, and Stalin combined, were killed by influenza in those three years,” Moore says.
Moore states that certain illnesses such as rabies may be harder to eradicate because they have animal reservoirs. But for medically ill children who cannot get vaccinated, they rely on the rest of society to get their vaccinations so illnesses do not spread.
“The fact that pretty much any of the illnesses we’re offering vaccines for, is an illness that one, we can prevent with vaccines. And two, is an illness, that you’d really rather not have.”