Last week, University Health Services sent an email notifying University of Wisconsin-Madison students about a confirmed case of measles on campus, with 4,000 individuals directly notified of their exposure.
The anti-vaccination sentiment, amplified during the COVID-19 era and legitimized by high-profile skeptics like Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., makes “flukes” like this feel routine.
“Anti-vaxxers” were not born with the Make America Healthy Again movement, but have existed since the advent of vaccination itself. Opposition to compulsory vaccination began with the rollout of the smallpox vaccine in 1796. Similar to today's skeptics, such “free-thinkers” argued this medical practice threatened their civil liberties and invited death.
Defending the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is like having to defend a spherical Earth; they are debates that only exist because some people insist that reality is optional.
The medical consensus is clear and simple: vaccines are not only safe, but necessary. Over the past five decades, vaccines have saved 154 million lives and have decreased infant mortality by 40%. Extensive research shows no credible evidence connecting vaccines to developmental or neurological harm, weakened immunity, acute injuries or any other far-fetched claim your aunt posts on Facebook.
Anti-vax activists often argue their decision to forgo life-saving medicine is a personal choice, and in some ways, it is. It is their choice to deny decades of research from leading health organizations, Nobel Prize winning scientists and the overwhelming majority of the medical world. It is their choice to accept missing weeks of work and school, urgent care bills and long recoveries for something preventable. It is even their choice to face the possibility of extreme symptoms and hospitalization, but in the words of Forrest Gump, “stupid is as stupid does.”
However, when you share air on a campus of 50,000 other students, most of whom you do not know, and whose medical histories, vulnerabilities or past exposures you cannot possibly account for, your “personal choice” extends beyond your own health and safety.
Children who are too young to be vaccinated, immunocompromised individuals, people who cannot receive vaccines for medical reasons, and scores of others are put at risk by the resulting weakened herd immunity. When people who can get vaccinated choose not to, they endanger those around them. Vaccine refusal isn’t just irresponsible, it’s selfish.
Universities encourage students to think critically and approach the world with curious skepticism. However, such scholarly feats must be rooted in evidence and fact. We do not allow students to opt out of lab safety because they did their own research, and we do not treat rules surrounding academic integrity as a matter of personal freedom. By the same logic, vaccination is a shared responsibility and commitment to protect our community. Is UW-Madison a community that takes evidence seriously, or one that denies science in the name of rugged individualism?
Outbreaks of preventable diseases should be a relic of the past. UW-Madison’s students should not have to worry about measles in Qdoba or hepatitis in Rheta’s Dining Hall. The moral and scientific evidence is clear: get vaccinated.
University Health Services has information on campus vaccine clinics here.
Brady Ahler is a sophomore studying Political Science and Economics. Do you agree that vaccines on campus are a social responsibility? Send all comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com
