To Immunize or Not to Immunize - Essay Example

The issue of vaccination is always something that has encouraged a great deal of debate throughout society. Invariably, vaccination campaigns have been engaged as a means of diminishing or stamping out the existence of various strains of illnesses. Furthermore, many of these illnesses have a very low mortality rate and do not necessarily pose an extant threat to the continued survival existence of humanity (Tortura et al., 2013). However, the case in question has the potential to provide just such a threat.

Ultimately, scientific researches indicated that the mortality rate for the current strain of avian flu that has been exhibited within China stands at 100%. Although it is unclear whether or not the potential for this particular strain to jump species and be exhibited within the human population is unclear, the extraordinarily high risk that this particular strain of avian flu poses encourages all individuals within society to appreciate the gravity of the situation and engage with a drastic and radical vaccination program as a means of ameliorating just such a risk.

It should be reiterated at this particular juncture that even though the potential for this particular strain to jump species is unknown, the inherent risk that it represents is enough to warrant drastic action on the part of medical help professionals and government actors that would be able to make available the existing public funding that could help to provide enough vaccination doses to vaccinate the entire United States population.Besides the issue of cost, individuals that opposed such a vaccination program would invariably point to the fact that prior vaccination programs were able to effectively ameliorate potential damages to society merely by vaccinating the very young and very old (Ritvo et al., 2013). Although this particular approach has been effective with respect to H1N1 and other strains of avian flu in the past, such a limited approach does not come anywhere close to addressing the broad and categorical dangers that had been alluded to above; at least to the extent that the 100% mortality rate for birds could easily translate into an extraordinarily high mortality rate within humans.

Ultimately, the issue at hand is one of risk. The risk of not inoculating the entire population is one that society can ill afford (Johnson et al., 2014). Additionally, even in the eventuality that a high percentage of individuals were inoculated, those that were not still incur high health care costs and place inordinate strain upon the system as it currently exists. Even in the eventuality that 25% of the population that was infected with the flu died, this would represent an extraordinarily high traffic loss and loss of human life that the United States would have great difficulty recovering from.

By means of commencement comparison, the cost of inoculating entire population is relatively low. When this comparison is made and it is understood that the cost of inaction is extraordinarily high, as compared to the cost of action, the need to inoculate the entire population and ensure that a wide scale pandemic is not realized comes to a new level of appreciation.ReferencesJohnson, L. A., Clará, W., Gambhir, M., Chacón- Fuentes, R., Marín-Correa, C., Jara, J., & . Azziz-Baumgartner, E. (2014). Improvements in pandemic preparedness in 8 Central American countries, 2008 - 2012.

 BMC Health Services Research, 14(1), 1-21. doi:10.1186/1472-6963-14-209Ritvo, P., Perez, D. F., Wilson, K., Gibson, J. L., Guglietti, C. L., Shawn Tracy, C. C., & . Upshur, R. G. (2013). Canadian national surveys on pandemic influenza preparations: pre-pandemic and peri-pandemic findings. BMC Public Health, 13(1), 1-8. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-271Tortora, G., Funke, B. & Case, C. (2013). Microbiology An Introduction, Books a La Carte Edition. City: Benjamin-Cummings Pub Co.