What Is the Difference Between Immunization and Vaccination?
--
By the WHO definition:
- Vaccination employs vaccines to stimulate the body’s own immune system to protect a person against subsequent infection or disease.
- Immunization is the process wherein a person is made immune or resistant to an infectious disease, typically by the administration of a vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers similar definitions:
- Vaccination is the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.
- Immunization is a process by which a person becomes protected against a disease through vaccination.
So what brought all of this on? Hearing more than one person say, “We have to get flu shots every year and that has never cured the flu so why do we have to have COVID shots?”
Fair question since the COVID shots are, as of today, looking like something that we may have to get more of as new variants come out. Thanks to the Delta variant, at-risk groups are getting a third shot as a booster.
As kids, we were required to receive all kinds of shots and provide proof of those shots before we could even attend school. In the 60s it was
Smallpox
Diphtheria*
Tetanus*
Pertussis*
Polio (OPV)
Measles
Mumps
Rubella
* Given in combination as DTP
In the 70s the list looked more like this.
Late 1970s | Recommended Vaccines
Diphtheria*
Tetanus*
Pertussis*
Polio (OPV)
Measles**
Mumps**
Rubella**
* Given in combination as DTP
** Given in combination as MMR
If you’ll notice smallpox was removed from the list in the 70s. Why? It was all but obsolete. Nearly everyone that needed one had one so? No more smallpox.
If you go here and scroll through the lists by year you will notice however that there are some that never leave the list. Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Polio (OPV). Why is that? If all kids are getting them as they should and we almost never hear of any kids in the US at least having one of these dreaded diseases why after all of these years are they still receiving vaccines?
The last case of an outbreak of smallpox in the US was in 1945.
Measles? 13 cases in 2020. Not completely gone and not that long ago but still, is it enough to justify the continued vaccinations of kids?
Mumps? 616 in 2020. We’re going in the wrong direction here people.
Now here’s where things really get interesting. The CDC states that,
Rubella was eliminated from the United States in 2004. Rubella elimination is defined as the absence of continuous disease transmission for 12 months or more in a specific geographic area. Rubella is no longer endemic (constantly present) in the United States.
They go on to say,
However, rubella remains a problem in other parts of the world. It can still be brought into the U.S. by people who get infected in other countries.
Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. Maybe, just maybe this is why kids still have to get shots for things that are at a minimum in the US or have even disappeared. Visitors to the US. Or people that are relocating here for whatever reason.
One last time quoting from the CDC, this time in regards to polio.
This means that there is no year-round transmission of poliovirus in the United States. Since 1979, no cases of polio have originated in the U.S.
However, the virus has been brought into the country by travelers with polio. The last time this happened was in 1993.
So again, from an outside source. So this leaves a lot to be digested.
So like the flu, it isn’t just variants. It’s carriers. Some get shots. Some don’t. One country makes them mandatory. Another doesn’t. We are a global community. Long gone are the days of people being born and dying in the same community they spent their lives in. People move. People travel. Not just in their country but others.
You don’t even have to travel to get pick something up from someone else. I can tell you about the shell shock I had when I first moved to DC. I heard so many different languages being spoken. So many people from all walks of life and from all over the world. From Embassy Row to all of the colleges and universities, teaching hospitals, job opportunities.
So this brings us back to the COVID vaccine and maybe we should even throw mask-wearing in there.
The person behind you in the checkout line at the grocery store? The crosswalk guard assisting your kid across the street? The bank teller you just talked to about your deposit? All of them and more — you don’t know where they’ve been and you don’t know who they’ve been exposed to.
That’s why we keep having to getting “shots” aka vaccinations. The vaccinations are only as good as the number of people getting them. The number of people immunized against these diseases should be proportional.
Where does that leave us? No doubt getting the COVID vaccine up to three times in the here and now and maybe boosters for the rest of our days. Time will tell.
This video is what got me down that frackin’ rabbit hole. If you read enough of my stuff you’ll see that this happens a lot! I had long since forgotten about iron lungs let alone that someone out there was still using one.
You can read more about it from the reference that I used for this piece here.
