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What If We Stopped Vaccinations?
WHAT IF
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10/4/2023
How bad would things get if everyone stopped vaccinating their kids?
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📺
TV
Transcript
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00:00
You've heard all the scary rumors surrounding vaccines.
00:09
They cause autism.
00:11
They contain toxins.
00:13
Even that they can give you the disease that they're trying to prevent.
00:16
It's misinformation like this that has caused American vaccination rates
00:20
to drop significantly over the past couple of decades.
00:24
Some people believe their children would be better off in a world without vaccines.
00:29
But do they fully grasp what that world would look like?
00:33
What kind of diseases would be welcomed back into our lives?
00:37
This is WHAT IF, and here's what would happen if we stopped vaccinations.
00:44
Through the years, vaccines have been successful in reducing the spread of deadly diseases
00:48
like measles, diphtheria, and rubella,
00:51
to the point where they've nearly disappeared from America.
00:55
When people stop seeing these diseases,
00:57
some start to wonder why we're still vaccinating against them.
01:01
Well, if you want to see how a so-called controlled disease can make a comeback,
01:05
just ask the people of Japan.
01:08
Let me paint a picture for you.
01:10
It's 1974 in Japan,
01:13
and 80% of people were getting the whooping cough vaccine.
01:16
With only 393 cases of whooping cough,
01:19
and zero related deaths throughout the whole country that year,
01:23
the Japanese started to let their guard down.
01:26
By 1979, only 10% of children were being vaccinated.
01:30
The result was a whopping 13,000 cases that year,
01:34
and 41 related deaths.
01:37
Shocked by the whole ordeal,
01:38
the Japanese quickly turned back to routine vaccination,
01:42
and the disease numbers dropped once again.
01:45
People usually see the decision not to vaccinate as a very personal, individual matter,
01:50
thinking they should have the right to be able to control what goes into their child's body.
01:55
Sure, we get that.
01:56
But what a lot of people don't understand
01:58
is that if everyone made the same individual decision,
02:02
it would have catastrophic effects,
02:04
and eventually spell far more danger for your child.
02:07
The fewer people who get vaccinated,
02:09
the more opportunities a disease has to spread.
02:13
When you decide not to get vaccinated,
02:15
you're not only accepting the possibility of contracting a disease yourself,
02:19
but also the chance of spreading it to others around you,
02:21
and playing a part in an epidemic.
02:24
There are hundreds of thousands of people who can't get vaccinated
02:27
due to treatments for cancer or other conditions,
02:30
and their safety relies on the rest of us being vaccinated.
02:34
The next time someone tries to convince you that vaccines are too dangerous,
02:38
just let them consider what our world would look like without vaccines.
02:42
We'd be transported back to a world we thought we had overcome,
02:46
where life for children was especially brutal.
02:49
In America, every year, 48,000 people would be hospitalized with measles,
02:54
and 500 would die.
02:57
The chickenpox would cause 10,000 children to be hospitalized,
03:01
and between 70 and 100 would die.
03:04
And Hepatitis A and B would re-emerge as silent epidemics
03:08
affecting millions of people.
03:11
These are just a handful of the old diseases
03:13
that would come back to wreak havoc if we all stopped vaccinations.
03:17
So why stop?
03:19
There hasn't been a single credible study linking vaccines to long-term health conditions.
03:24
In fact, the paper that started the theory that vaccines cause autism
03:29
was so discredited that the author lost his medical license.
03:33
Maybe one day, we'll be able to eradicate all diseases from our planet.
03:38
But would new challenges just come to take their place?
03:41
Well, that's a topic for another WHAT IF.
03:44
[MUSIC]
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