The importance of illness prevention and management in vaccine preventable diseases and the relation to novel illnesses and legislation.
Chelsea M. Collins, BSN, RN, CEN, SANE-A
Johns Hopkins University, School of Nursing & School of Public Health
Social & Behavioral Foundations of Primary Care
Vaccination has been around for centuries with the first vaccination occurring in 1796. Most vaccine related adverse events are mild. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for every 1 million doses of vaccines that were distributed, 1 individual was compensated. It’s important to note, not all compensation means that the vaccine caused injury. In the adult population, 50,000-90,000 vaccine preventable deaths occur each year. It is estimated that for every dollar spent on a vaccine, $6.30 in direct medical costs and up to $18.40 in indirect costs is saved.
Colorado has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. 95.1% of kindergartners nationally in the 2017-2018 school year were vaccinated for the diptheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine, while 94.3% had coverage for the MMR vaccine. In Colorado, this coverage was 88.7% for the same year. One case of measles costs approximately $140,000 for treatment, and the total cost to prevent the spread of measles is $266 million. Additionally, the US spends nearly $27 billion annually treating adults for vaccine preventable diseases. According to one study, 84% of Coloradans believe that vaccines should be required for children to attend public school.
Live interactive map of coronavirus-19
As of Monday, March 9, 2020, there are over 110,000 cases of coronavirus-19 internationally, with 3,994 deaths reported. Ongoing media storms and fear, toilet paper, water, and hand sanitizer are unable to be found in many stores. US stock market trading was halted on Monday, March 9, 2020 after falling 7% due to coronavirus fears. Masks in hospitals to protect health care employees are on short supply, with price gouging and ongoing purchasing of masks. Shortages of drugs in the US healthcare system are potential.
Legislation in the Colorado legislature like HB20-163, which seeks to close the gap in immunization coverage and protect vulnerable populations are paramount to spread preventable illnesses. HB20-1239, which has contingencies that already exist, HB20-1297 and SB20-084, not only prohibit effective management of preventable illnesses and increase costs to communities of those treatments. Fear of covid-19, which does not have a vaccine available in the immediate future, but ignoring vaccines available perpetuate compromising populations like immunocompromised individuals who are unable to be vaccinated, children, and the elderly. Legislators, health care providers, schools, and community leaders must take a stand to ensure ongoing implications of preventable diseases are not drown out by panic and fear of novel diseases. By preventing the illnesses that we can, more efforts can be placed into the care and treatment of those novel illnesses that continuously present themselves.
Tags: coronavirus, legislation, Policy, prevention, Vaccines
Social, Cultural & Behavioral Issues in PHC & Global Health 
March 11, 2020 at 12:51 pm |
Thank you for your enlightening article. I always find it fascinating how people make their health decisions. It seems like an increasing proportion of our population is opposed to vaccination each year, and yet, there is mass hysteria over a comparatively minor illness like the coronavirus (not to say that there is no threat, but compared to the threat of measles/mumps/rubella the risk is quite low).
I feel like all of this “fake science” has run rampant with the introduction of the internet. Of course, there are very reputable that are now also more accessible to us, but for the greater population who may be uneducated in critical appraisal of research, it is easy to succumb to the fear mongering that is distributed by disreputable sources.
March 11, 2020 at 3:11 pm |
Hi Chelsea,
Thank you for your blog post. It is really interesting to look at people’s fears and attitudes towards preventable diseases that have vaccines versus those, including COVID-19, that do not. The fears surrounding COVID-19 are due to the fact that information, especially false information, can spread quite rapidly. As the CDC mentioned, the fear and anxiety that surrounds the COVID-19 outbreak can lead to social stigma towards specific groups of people (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/related-stigma.html). As such, we need to do our part by stopping the dissemination of false information and try to provide our communities with proper information without raising anxiety and fear.
March 13, 2020 at 12:32 pm |
Thank you for the blog post on this heated topic. This is a scary situation that many things are still unknown, especially the nature of the virus and the contagious patterns. It would be wonderful if the vaccine can be developed successfully, but I would not expect it to be soon or easy. Precautions need to be made by everyone to protect the whole public population. Hope everyone stay healthy.
March 13, 2020 at 5:59 pm |
Thank you for the informative statistics and very relevant topic on COVID-19. I agree, that it is much more important to prevent diseases from progressing in the first place as it is much more economically sound to prevent a disease from taking place than actually treating the disease. And although vaccinations are in the works right now, preventative methods such as hands washing campaigns and even the mass quarantine I feel are the correct preventative measures to ensure more dire consequences if measures are not taking place. We are seeing a very stark capacity issue going on in the US right now (ie. hospital beds, face masks, alcohol based hand sanitizers) and can only imagine how much worse the situation would be if there was no incentivization for vaccinations for other viral infections.
March 13, 2020 at 6:24 pm |
I agree with what Mary said on the stigma and how important it is to fight it if we want people feel comfortable getting tested and letting others know if they are vulnerable. This was a good post in general Chelsea, and I like how you brought in two different topics and found a way to relate them. I think the topic of vaccinations is very interesting generally, and how do we actually increase rates. It will also be interesting to see how things unfold when a COVID vaccine is finally produced (in about a year), and what the rates of use will be given people see the tangible consequences that they might not with Measles.
March 13, 2020 at 10:11 pm |
Thank you Chelsea for this very good post!
It amazes me to see that since March 9, 2020, there were are over 110,000 cases of COVID and 3,994 deaths reported thus far, a overall mortality of around 0.04%. Today, personally I had issues buying basic supplies in all of the stores that I went to. The sortages that you mentioned as being “potential”, such as drugs, are now (4 days later) a real thing.
Regarding vaccination, It would be great if the vaccine can be developed successfully. However, based on previous personal experience working at the institution that creates vaccines in Brazil, this is a slow, meandering process. Usually if the vaccine is distributed in less than 1 year from the outbreak, it is considered to be what we refer to as a “unicorn” scenario (meaning possible but unheard of).
I personally appreciate the information on the Legislation in Colorado like HB20-163. I agree with your assesment that closing the gap in immunization coverage is paramount. In Brazil, what we saw with previous outbreaks, was an increase in mortality among the most vulnerable populations. That is due to a failure of the public health officials to detect areas that are in need of greater coverage and assistance. As Professor Castillo-Salgado, from the Epidemiology department at Hopkins says, it is irresponsible and poorly effective to ignore areas of need in public health scenarios, since all of the funds and actions will have a high cost with low results.
Your final call to action to ” Legislators, health care providers, schools, and community leaders” is also very important and significant for the issue at hand. I agree that they must take a stand to help control the panic and fear of this novel disease.
Overall great post!