Vaccination...Prologue

Last fall semester, my school campus was alarmed by the notorious H1N1 virus which was spreading with surprising speed worldwide. The line for the vaccination of this virus was incredibly long and the images of the chaos caused to get the vaccination decorated the headline news daily. I remember discussing with my friends whether or not to receive the vaccination. In the end, we all got the shots in the health center. Afterwards I called my sister, hoping to receive some commendation for the day’s feat. However, my sister replied in a worried tone that she just read a news article that there was a person who became paralyzed after receiving the Tami flu vaccination (Thanks, sis for the encouragement.) Afterwards, none of my other family members received the vaccination and decided to observe me as the family guinea pig for the efficacy of the new vaccine which was indeed causing several worries for its relatively recent creation. My father actually visited Seoul, South Korea, which had a tad more heat of swine flu syndrome fear. The swine flu chaos was hitting Seoul pretty hard around the end of last year and the Korean broadcast reported several renowned Korean celebrities contracting the flu almost weekly and one of the celebrity’s son died due to complications of the flu. Even these days I see South Korean news channels and blogs reporting recent cases of swine flu in the show business in which idol stars came down with the flu. As for my dad, despite the fact that he traveled around the city, completely dependent on public transportation and exposing himself to more possibility of getting the flu virus, came back home swine-flu-free and healthy. So far, none of the family members (including me) have contracted the swine flu. So was the vaccination necessary? Was it something way too precautionary? I remember discussing this issue of necessity of H1N1 virus vaccination. Some of my classmates thought that vaccination was superfluous. They thought they can survive the H1N1 flu without the help of the vaccination, and that is should they ever contract it. I have always been a supporter of the idea of vaccination. But it turns out that significant amount of people are fearful about this idea of artificial immunization. So, this is my first stab at the controversy over vaccination. Well, then, to be continued.