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Vaccines and the Anti-Vaccination Movement: An Interview with Dr. Paul Offit
Lindsay Beyerstein
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia
Beyerstein: What is herd immunity, and what kind of vaccination rate do we need to sustain to keep herd immunity strong for measles?
Offit: Herd immunity just means that enough people are vaccinated in the population so that the virus or the bacteria has a lot of trouble spreading from one person to the next because so many people are vaccinated. In terms of the level of herd immunity that’s necessary, it depends on the nature and contagiousness of the virus or bacteria you’re trying to prevent. For these highly contagious viruses like measles, mumps, or chicken pox, you really need to have between 92 and 94 percent of the population immunized in order to prevent that spread.
For diseases that are less contagious, you don’t need as high of a percentage because what happens is that when herd immunity starts to fade, you see exactly what you’re seeing now—which is the most contagious diseases come back first: measles, mumps, whooping cough. It’s just what you would expect.
Beyerstein: Many of the anti-vaccination parents are well educated and affluent. Why do you think that they’re such fertile ground for these crazy ideas?
Offit: I think they don’t fear the disease. I think it’s that simple. I think in Southern California, you’re living this wealthy, upper middle class, upper-class environment. You’re eating well, you’re exercising. You don’t see this disease so you think this is not going to happen to me, until it happens to you. That’s the way it always works with these diseases.
Beyerstein: There is this group that you’ve identified as the vaccine hesitant parents, and you said that they have a big role to play in improving public health outcomes for vaccinations. Who are they and what can we do to get them on our side?
Offit: Most people, there’s just an anti-vaccine sentiment. They don’t see the disease; they’re not scared of the disease; they’ve read scary stuff on the Internet. They’re not sure what they should do. I think those people are, for the most part, convincible. I think we just have to be a little more compelling in the way we try and convince them.
Beyerstein: Are people more friendly toward, say, polio vaccinations because they know that polio means paralysis? I get the sense that people are less likely to want to refuse that ththem on our side?an a measles vaccine or a diphtheria vaccine, or pertussis, that they don’t even know what the disease really is.
Offit: It’s interesting, isn’t it? People are hesitant to get an HPV vaccine, human papilloma virus vaccine, to prevent a disease that causes twenty-five thousand cases of cancer, four thousand deaths a year. Yet, they’re happy to get a polio vaccine. We haven’t had a case of polio in the United States since 1979. You’re right. I think we’re not very good at judging risk.
Beyerstein: There was an opinion editorial in USA Today recently that was arguing that parents who refuse to vaaccinate for mandatory vaccines should be jailed. Do you think that is acceptable or necessary?
Offit: No, I think that goes too far. We have three ways that you can choose not to get a vaccine in this country and one is a medical exemption. I think that’s fine. I think this so-called personal belief exemption is nonsensical. Vaccines aren’t a belief system. They’re an evidence-based system. There’s abundant evidence that shows they are what they claim to be.
(Adaptado de: BEYERSTEIN, L. Vaccines and the Anti-Vaccination Movement: An Interview with Dr. Paul Offit, Skeptical Inquirer (online) Volume 39.3, Maio/Jun.2015. Disponível em: . Acesso em: 5 jun. 2018.)
Com base nos aspectos linguísticos do texto, atribua V (verdadeiro) ou F (falso) às afirmativas a seguir.
( ) Nas frases “we’re not very good at judging risk.” e “There was an opinion editorial [...] that was arguing”, os termos grifados estão no mesmo tempo verbal.
( ) Em “Who are they and what can we do to get them on our side?”, os termos grifados referem-se a “public health outcomes”.
( ) Na frase “the bacteria has a lot of trouble”, o termo grifado é uma marca de informalidade.
( ) Em “They’re not sure what they should do”, o termo grifado pode ser substituído, sem alteração de sentido, por “had better”.
( ) Na frase “people are less likely to want to refuse that than a measles vaccine”, o termo grifado se refere a “polio vaccinations”.
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