Purpose and Benefits of Annual Flu Vaccination
"Influenza vaccination is the most effective method for preventing influenza virus infection and its potentially severe complications." (Update1)
The concept of herd immunity is the foundation for all vaccinations. Herd immunity can be defined as immunity in a significant portion of a population, usually at least 80 percent, to a given disease. Whether they are immune because they have been vaccinated or because they have already encountered the illness and built their own natural immunity, they provide protection to others who are not immune because the illness has little chance of spreading in the population. Those in favor of the flu vaccine say it makes sense then for lawmakers and health care administrators to push for a vaccine mandate to bring the rate as close to 100 percent as possible.
- Influenza vaccines ... cut the risk that elderly people will die of the virus in half and reduced the chance of hospitalization by more than a quarter, according to a study released today by the New England Journal of Medicine.
Read more about this topic: Influenza Vaccine
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—In New York City, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
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“No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,—while we walk under the triumphal arches of the elms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)