Health Consequences of Religious and Philosophical Exemptions From Immunization Laws
Point:
- Compare notes of measles among vaccinated and non-vaccinated (exemptor) adolescents
- Mathematical Model: Do exemptors pose an increased risk for non-exemptors getting measles
Methods:
- Cohort Retrospective
o study in which the medical records of groups of individuals who are alike in many ways but differ by a certain characteristic are compared for a particular outcome
- Review of State
- Health Records
- If number of exemptors increases 3x, and exemptors and nonexemptors mix evenly, then number of measles cases among non-exemmptors will more than double
How do vaccines work???
- A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.
- Just because people choose to get vaccine doesn’t mean they are protected.
This gives a hilarious schematic for how vaccines work :)
//www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/howvpd.htm
