E.g. if a woman has a tetanus shot, why does the kid need one? If she has an mmr shot, why does her child need to get one? If the lady also has a shot immunizing herself from chicken-pox, why isn’t the child also immune from chicken-pox?
Wouldn’t the child be immune from the diseases/ sicknesses that the mother already got her shots for?
In: 108
First because immunizations aren’t permanent. Immunizations have a certain time frame where they’re effective in the body. This timeframe is different for all immunizations and it’s based on how viruses evolve and how they locate themselves in our bodies and how our bodies fight them off. Tetanus shots, for example, last on average 10years. You’re supposed to get a new one every decade. However, flue shots are more or less yearly because the flu virus evolves and mutates much more often and can infect us in many more ways than tetanus. So we have to update the immunization for influenza much more often using new strains and to ensure our bodies still have enough of the inoculated virus to continue making antibodies. Because eventually, our bodies will get rid of the inoculated virus that was included in the immunization and will stop producing antibodies for it. And that’s because immunizations don’t change our DNA; so the body doesn’t permanently keep the instructions to fight the virus. It can only do so as long as the virus is present. Once it’s not present anymore, the body has to learn again how to produce those antibodies. So if a person gets a tetanus shot at 10years old but doesn’t get it updated and has a baby at 25, they likely have no antibodies against tetanus of their own to pass to the fetus in utero nor through their breast milk.
Second, because once the child is outside the womb, it no longer gets blood with antibodies from the immunization. In utero, children get antibodies through the blood supply of the person carrying them. Once born, they can continue to get antibodies from breast milk of the person nursing them. But once they are weaned and no longer drink breast milk; then they have to rely only on their own bodies to produce antibodies against viruses. So that’s when they’ll need to be immunized, so that their body can start producing antibodies on its own since they no longer get antibodies from anywhere else. And as I said, immunizations don’t change DNA so they can’t leave instructions for your body to create antibodies on its own without the presence of the virus in your system. So we have to be immunized to start that process.
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