14 DAY TRIAL // There's a lot of talk these days about how vaccines are dangerous and can make people seriously sick, even though they're supposedly designed to keep us free from contagious diseases.
Well, leave it to a new MinuteEarth video to put these rumors to rest. The animation, released this past Monday and available below, discusses just how risky vaccines really are. As it turns out, they're actually perfectly safe.
In fact, regular folks are about 80 times more likely to get hit by lightning than suffer a severe reaction to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Now that's comforting to hear, isn't it?
The reason many people fear vaccines and would much rather leave their immune system to its own devices when it comes to fighting potential invaders is because these concoctions get way more bad publicity than they deserve.
“Because vaccines are preventative measures given to healthy people, they're designed to be safer and have fewer side effects than interventions like medication or surgery,” the video explains.
In case anyone was wondering, vaccines work by introducing the body to compounds mimicking actual disease agents. When in the body, these compounds are destroyed by the immune system.
While fighting these supposed threats, the immune system learns skills that, when proper pathogens pop up, will help it obliterate them. In a way, vaccines are like a boot camp for our immune system.
