{"id":4600,"date":"2020-05-22T18:01:53","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T22:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2020-05-22T18:01:53","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T22:01:53","slug":"choosing-immunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=4600","title":{"rendered":"Choosing Immunity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Loey Jones-Perpich<\/strong><br \/>\nThe Communicator<br \/>\nAnn Arbor Community HS<br \/>\n1st Place Division 4, News Writing<br \/>\nEnvironmental, Health or Science<\/p>\n<p><b>JUDGING CRITERIA<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Topic relevant to the school or students and covers health, science or environmental story that is informative<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sharp, attention-getting lead grabs reader and arouses curiosity<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shows thorough reporting skills through research and interviewing<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Effective use of facts\/quotes from both primary and secondary sources<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Balanced, fair and sensitive presentation<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sentences, paragraphs of varied length; written clearly, concisely and vividly<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proper diction\/grammar; use of third person<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p2\"><b> <\/b><b>Dana* grew up happy, healthy, and except<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">for a bout of chickenpox in elementary school, virus-free. She noticed her friends and classmates with glitter band-aids on their arms every fall, but when she asked her parents why she never got her flu shot, they simply told her that she was healthy, so she didn\u2019t need one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">She didn\u2019t challenge their answer; she never got the flu, so she figured her parents were right. Years passed and she remained safe from both the scary needles in the doctor\u2019s office and the virus.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">But it wasn\u2019t just the flu shot that Dana wasn\u2019t getting: she had never been vaccinated for anything, not even as a baby.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">\u201cWhen I was in middle school, I didn\u2019t think about it as that big of an issue,\u201d Dana said. \u201cIt never really affected me; I would just listen to what my parents said. My mom believes that if you are healthy enough and are able to fight off the flu or something, then you don\u2019t actually need to get a flu shot. I was like, \u2018okay, if that\u2019s what you want, I\u2019m fine with not getting shots.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">When Dana entered high school and surrounded herself with politically passionate people, she gradually became aware that she was one of the few unvaccinated people in her school. Annual numbers of measles cases in the U.S. began to rise \u2014 going from 120 cases in 2017 to 372 in 2018 \u2014 and she started to educate herself on vaccinations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">The modern anti-vaccination movement started growing in 1998, when British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield published a since-withdrawn study linking the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (M.M.R.) vaccine to autism. In 2007, actress Jenny McCarthy publicized the movement when she blamed the vaccine for her son\u2019s autism, saying that he was diagnosed soon after receiving the M.M.R. vaccine. Theories linking vaccination to autism have continuously been proven incorrect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">Since the rise of the modern anti-vaccination movement, diseases like measles \u2014 which was declared eradicated in the U.S. in 2000 \u2014 have reemerged. With political turmoil erupting in the U.S. and debate over vaccinations rising to the front pages of newspapers, Dana worried about exposure to diseases and stopped sharing her medical background with anyone except for a few close friends.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">\u201cI started to realize that people really would look down on people like me who don\u2019t get their shots,\u201d Dana said. \u201cI was scared to come out as someone who was [unvaccinated]. I definitely do feel targeted, and if I were to tell people who are really against it, I\u2019d be really scared of what they might say to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">She felt safe enough to confide in a few friends, and to her surprise, was accepted with open arms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cThey like to joke around about it,\u201d Dana said. \u201cI\u2019m fine with that most of the time. Other times it\u2019s hard because I don\u2019t think they realize that they\u2019re the ones who don\u2019t have to worry about what people think about them. There are<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">people who really disagree with what my family\u2019s doing \u2014 what I\u2019m doing. That\u2019s just hard sometimes that they might not realize that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">At some of Dana\u2019s more recent check-ups, her pediatrician encouraged her family to strongly consider vaccination and whether or not they wanted to risk symptoms of viruses like tetanus, which include painful muscle spasms and even death. When her father heard the pediatrician\u2019s argument, he changed his mind; when Dana was younger and there wasn\u2019t potential for her to get seriously sick, he believed that she didn\u2019t need vaccinations, but the doctor had swayed him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">With her dad on board, she told her mom that she wanted to get vaccinated. Her response was positive, but every time Dana reminded her to get an appointment, it seemed like it fell off of her mom\u2019s radar. Confused, she contemplated whether or not she actually wanted to be vaccinated, or if it was just pressure from her peers and pediatrician.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">\u201cIt seems almost as if the people who get vaccinated are really putting pressure on me to have to get them done,\u201d Dana said. \u201cThat does kind of upset me, because I shouldn\u2019t have to care what people think about me and the decisions I make on that certain subject, but on the other hand, these are really risky diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">Nevertheless, she continued to pressure her mom to make an appointment. Though she was excited at the idea of finally being immune to the diseases that she had been scared of for years, she worried about her relationship with her mom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">\u201c[I worry about] what my mom will think of me after I get them done,\u201d Dana said. \u201cI know she\u2019ll support me in any way, but I think maybe in the back of her head she\u2019ll be thinking, \u2018Why did she have to do it \u2014 did she not believe what I said?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">When her mom makes the appointment for her, Dana will be vaccinated for meningitis, hepatitis and hopefully tetanus. She wishes that she had been vaccinated as a child, but for her, the end outcome is the same; immunity against harmful diseases will go a long way towards making her feel safer in the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Loey Jones-Perpich The Communicator Ann Arbor Community HS 1st Place Division 4, News Writing Environmental, Health or Science JUDGING CRITERIA Topic relevant to the school or students and covers health, science or environmental story that is informative Sharp, attention-getting lead grabs reader and arouses curiosity Shows thorough reporting skills through research and interviewing Effective [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":4601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65,4],"tags":[175,23],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","category-environmentalhealthorscience-nw","category-nw","tag-2019-20","tag-division4","post_format-post-format-image","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/NW17_ChoosingImmunity.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/NW17_ChoosingImmunity.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Joel Beeker","author_link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?author=9"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/NW17_ChoosingImmunity.jpg?fit=1488%2C955&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6K0n6-1cc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}