I was bit on the forehead last night during my high school soccer game against Unity Christian. I have never bled so aggressively. 

A teammate and I went up for a header and, unfortunately, collided heads. Her tooth caught the skin just below the right side of my hairline and, before I was even aware of what had happened, everyone was staring at me with a look of terror, and I was wiping pooling blood from my eyelids. 

After the conclusion of the game—which I played with a large green wrap around my forehead—we deemed stitches necessary, no matter my protest.

The process started with a fair-sized needle to my forehead. A shot.

Now, I have never been one for shots, but I refuse to cry in front of most people, and the doctor is no exception to that. My siblings, however, have a history of passing out. Middle children are always the toughest.

Regardless, these few pricks to the forehead reminded me of the shots I consistently receive, so the process was relatively normalized for me. This led me to begin thinking about those who do not commonly partake in shots, and I can assume you understand where I am going with this. The greatest debate only heightened by the recent pandemic: vaccination. 

If you have not yet inferred from my previous statements, yes, I am vaccinated, and yes, I am grateful for that. Not only because it keeps me safe, but because it allows me to keep others around me safe. However, I understand this may subject me to bias in this argument, and I want to be completely aware of that. So, take it or leave it, this is simply my opinion.

Vaccination is a preventable measure to protect humans from diseases that they are susceptible to. My topic of discussion today mainly surrounds why you should be vaccinated, not why all the reasons you think you shouldn’t are wrong. A glass half-full sorta approach.

Vaccination has historically been a successful method of preventing diseases that have killed, not only the elderly, but also infants and everyone in between. Diseases that once devastated large numbers of the human population are now nearly extinct because of vaccination—polio serving as an example.  

Vaccination can also work to help you in the long run, as its absence may prevent you from attending certain events and places, and long-term care for many vaccine-preventable diseases can be painful and expensive. Vaccination is an effective and worthwhile investment when it comes to health and financial management for the long term.

The issues of longevity comes back to one central thought. “I don’t have these diseases and I am unvaccinated. Yes, maybe you are unvaccinated and healthy. Question why this is. Is it because you rely on the people around you to be responsible enough to be vaccinated and stay healthy so there is no disease for you to catch? Conscious or not, that is the system you are relying on. Even if indirectly, vaccination is what is keeping you healthy. It is your responsibility to keep yourself safe so you do not harm others. We all owe it to one another.