Jacob Baggaley

7/7/19

News Analysis #2

The scientists concluded that when some additional laws were made concerning School
Vaccinations, they had a much better percentage rate of kids that were up to date on their
vaccinations which has in turn helped with keeping the schools safer for the children. What they
did to record their information was they have tracked the percentage of kindergarteners who
were caught up to their vaccinations as they have entered school and kept track of it over time.
They then found that as some additional laws requiring that people have certain vaccinations,
they saw a large increase of kindergarteners that were caught up with their vaccinations. In fact,
the report states that from 2000 to 2013 the rate of kindergarteners behind on vaccinations was
increasing from 7.8 to 9.8%, but then it dropped to 4.9% in 2017 according to laws made. This
report was stated from science news, a website updating trends in human health. (Cunningham,
2019).
The impact that this can have on society is huge. The major problem that we face with
kids that haven’t kept up on their vaccinations is that they can catch something that also gets the
other kids sick. In other words, even if your kid was vaccinated they are not immune and could
get the terrible illness from another kid who was behind. Is this fair? I don’t think so. In fact I
believe that we are taking steps in the right direction as we are requiring kids to be vaccinated to
be in school. This effects people in so many ways because if just one kid is behind and catches
an illness that could have been avoided with a vaccine, you could see entire communities paying
the price for it. We should get the kids vaccinated while they are young.
In the article they actually don’t mention that they are a part of any specific group or that
they have any sort of political affiliation. I feel confident that the statistics used are good
statistics simply because it should be very simple to figure out from school registration who is
behind on their vaccinations, and in turn those statistics can easy be traced over a period of time
and we can see the trend when we add in the new laws regarding vaccinations.
This article expanded my ideas about requiring vaccinations to be up to date for every kid
simply because you can see that the trend improves as we make laws requiring vaccinations. I
have thought that it would be important for schools to require vaccinations for a long time
because we need to keep our public schools as safe as possible from dangerous illness, but this
study adds to my knowledge of how we can improve and help our public school systems. Some
people that don’t get vaccinations for a belief or health reason will need to find a school then that
has kids that are similar to their beliefs and won’t get vaccinated because I wouldn’t want my kid
to get sick from a kid who wouldn’t get vaccinated. People have the freedom to believe as they
wish, but with that choice will also come the choice to get vaccinated and attend public school or
don’t get vaccinated and get stuck in other schools.
Works Cited
Cunningham, A. (2019, July 2). California's new vaccine rules kept more kindergartners up-to-

date. Retrieved from ScienceNews: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/california-new-

vaccine-rules-kindergartners-shots?tgt=nr