12: Vaccines Cause..... Autism?

Through the hard work and determination of our lovely scientists, we now have amazing shots called vaccines. Vaccines prepare your body to fight back against diseases by infecting you with a weakened version of that disease which your body can fight back against and become immune to. Regardless of this gift from the gods, there are still people who are against vaccines. The main reason? Vaccines apparently cause autism.

So, what are the actual cons of being vaccinated, if any? The first actual risk in being vaccinated, is that you can actually fall ill. Some vaccines contain the weakened version of a virus. Although the virus has already been weakened, our bodies still might fail to defend against it, causing us to become sick. The second con, is that some people might have an allergic reaction, Anaphylaxis, which has resulted in a few number number of deaths. And, well. That's it. These are literally the only cons of vaccinations. Both scenarios very rarely happen. Regardless of these being the actual cons of vaccination, the main illogical reasons are the ones that get the most amount of people to become anti-vaxxers.

The most supported reasons are that vaccines cause autism, you can't trust the government or big corporations, and that vaccines are no longer needed. Obviously, just by reading that, I think the average person can tell that most anti-vaxxers are bonkers. First off, there is absolutely no evidence that vaccines cause autism. Any and all arguments made by anti-vaxxers have already been debunked several times. Secondly, how can you claim to be an anti-vaxxer because vaccines are managed by the government, but still live in a civilized community? What about the technology you use, are those tracking down your information and recording you? What about the meat you eat or medicine you use, those are also managed by the government. Do those things give you autism too? And for the final reason: Vaccines apparently do nothing. According to anti-vaxxers, no longer has there been any reported cases for the diseases that the vaccines are for in America, and boy I wonder why. It's almost as if the point of having vaccines was to stop cases from having to be reported in the first place.

The main reason why anti-vaxxers even have so many supporters in the first place, is because they scare people into being supporters. They talk about how vaccines are able to cause autism and are useless since the vaccinated diseases(that are gone to due the vaccines) are now gone. I find it confusing as to how vaccinating your child could even be seen as a risk in the first place even IF vaccines could give your children autism. All in all, the argument of anti-vaxxer's is pretty irrelevant as all they're saying is: I'd rather have my child die a slow and painful death from a disease than for them to get autism, because that's so much worse!

Progress: This post was mostly for me to talk about my opinion and beliefs while shutting down the opinions and beliefs of others with logos and ethos. I feel that I made a lot of progress with this post as it was heavily opinionated, allowing me to state and support my beliefs. Although I was in the majority group this time, I still voiced my opinions on the topic.

Reflection: I was happy with this blog post as it was something that I wanted to bring up and talk about. Before writing about this, I was heavily biased and thought there were no cons to vaccination but after researching, I've actually learned that there are some small cons to vaccinations. I hope that through future blog posts, I'll be able to learn more about both sides of an argument and support what I believe in.