There are a lot of perspectives and opinions on the topic of vaccines. Rather than choosing a particular stance, Get Factsinated takes a neutral approach by acting as an informative campaign. Our goal is to educate the public by presenting facts and situations suggesting what happens when people vaccinate, as well as what happens when they don’t.
The resistance to the spread of a contagious disease within a population that results if a sufficiently high proportion of individuals are immune to the disease, especially through vaccination. In other words, the more vaccinated people there are, the less likely diseases are to spread.
Unlike vaccination, herd immunity does not give a high level of individual protection, and so it is not a good alternative to getting vaccinated.
Today in the United States, all states require that children be vaccinated for certain diseases before school entry (the required immunizations vary by state). A variety of exemptions are allowed, depending on state and local regulations. Mississippi, West Virginia and California offer only medical exemptions to vaccination. In other states, medical, religious, and often philosophical/personal belief exemptions are available.
Overall, vaccination rates in the United States remain high. But many experts are wondering what the effect will be on public health of increasing numbers of children being exempted from vaccination. The number of states that have removed religious/philosophical exemptions may be low, but they are slowly increasing. In 2016, Texas decided it will remove all but medical exemptions in the near future.
Hover over the map to reveal exemption by state.
Blue = Religious/Philosophical/Medical
Yellow = Religious/Medical
Green = Medical Only