‘Vaccines don’t save lives. Vaccinations do’: Experts talk vaccine safety, misinformation

University of Wisconsin’s Morgridge Institute for Research, hosted a Fearless Science Forum event Oct. 27. The panelists included professor of Pathobiological Sciences Dr. Jorge Osorio, professors of Infectious Disease Dr. Nasia Safdar and Dr. John Williams. The discussion was moderated by Steenbock professor of Microbiological Sciences Dr. Paul Ahlquist.

The process of making sure vaccines are safe and effective is intensive, Safdar said. To start, researchers must prove a potential vaccine’s efficacy in the lab, before even making it to clinical trials. Clinical trials include multiple phases, with various safeguards and checkpoints. Even after the vaccine is approved, there’s continuous ‘post-approval’ processes, where the vaccines are monitored to ensure their benefits outweigh the risks, Safdar said.

For children, especially, vaccines are not given trivially — the disease has to be serious and the vaccine has to be proven to be effective and safe, Safdar said. The current recommended vaccines for children all provide immunity for dangerous illnesses, she said.

“For all these childhood illnesses, these are not trivial conditions. They take the lives of kids who have not been vaccinated,” Safdar said.

Trials are monitored by an outside safety board of experts, who stop trials typically for one of two reasons. The first is if the vaccine is clearly unsafe and causing harmful side effects. The other is the opposite: if the vaccine is clearly effective, it becomes unethical for researchers to continue with the placebo group, Williams said.

Being on these safety committees can be a lot of extra work, but it is worth it, Williams said.

“I think all of us who have seen the power of vaccines are willing to do that [be on the board] for the benefit for humans,” Williams said.

The panel also spoke to the importance of vaccinations, especially for extremely infectious diseases. To reach herd immunity, or the number of people needed to be vaccinated to completely avoid disease transmission in a community, for diseases like measles, requires 95% of the population to be vaccinated, Osorio said.

“We unfortunately live in a world where epidemics and pandemics are going to continue to happen … Vaccines are one of the most important public health interventions,” Osorio said.

Some communities are nearly 20% below the level needed for herd immunity, Ahlquist said. This can be partially attributed to vaccine misinformation, Williams said.

Finding reputable sources can be difficult, Safdar said. Panelists recommended the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Finding nuanced sources is another tip — sources that claim a vaccine is 100% effective or ineffective or sources that claim that millions of people are having certain side effects tend to be exaggerated, Safdar said.

“[Be skeptical of] far-reaching, broad claims made by people who have no standing in the field … Just because someone says something doesn’t mean it’s true,” Safdar said.

Panelists also spoke about the need to make vaccines accessible. The CDC just changed policies on some childhood vaccine bundles. Before, it was recommended to vaccinate young children against varicella and MMR in the same vaccine — now the CDC says to separate the vaccinations, Williams said. This could make it more of a barrier for vaccination, he said.

It’s important to reduce these barriers for vaccination, Safdar said.

“Vaccines don’t save lives. Vaccinations do. A vaccine sitting on the shelf is not going to do anyone any good,” Safdar said.