--- title: Vaccinations and why — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Vaccinations and why», a lesson of the medicine course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: If the real germ turns up later, the body knows it at once and wins before you get properly ill, which is why a jab protects you for years. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Medicine](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/) / Vaccinations and why # Vaccinations and why Lesson 29 of the medicine course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/1/) — If the real germ turns up later, the body knows it at once and wins before you get properly ill, which is why a jab protects you for years. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/2/) — Vaccines also protect people around you: when nearly everyone in a class is immune, a germ like measles can't find enough people to jump to, so babies too young for the jab and children having cancer treatment stay safe; this is herd immunity. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/3/) — In 1796 Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who caught mild cowpox didn't get deadly smallpox, and he made the first vaccine from it; nearly two hundred years later vaccination wiped smallpox off the Earth. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/4/) — The rows of jabs on the little red book are not random: each one is timed for when a child is most at risk, starting at 8 weeks old. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/5/) — A vaccine trains the immune system with a killed, weakened or partial version of a germ, or instructions to make a harmless piece of it, so the body fights the real germ quickly later; without a vaccine, the body needs days to learn to fight a new germ, so you can get properly ill first. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/6/) — A sore arm, a slight fever or tiredness for a day or two after a jab is a normal sign the immune system is responding, and does not mean the vaccine gave you the disease. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/7/) — In the UK babies have their first vaccines at 8 weeks, against diseases such as whooping cough, because babies are most at risk from them, and their immune systems easily handle several vaccines at once. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/8/) — Children have booster jabs before starting school, and teenagers get more at secondary school, such as HPV, which protects against some cancers, and meningitis vaccines. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/9/) — Measles is one of the most infectious diseases known and can cause pneumonia and brain swelling, and it spreads again wherever fewer people are vaccinated; there have been outbreaks in England, Europe and the USA in recent years. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/10/) — The MMR vaccine protects against measles, mumps and rubella in two doses in early childhood. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/11/) — The claim that MMR causes autism came from a 1998 study that was found to be dishonest and was withdrawn in 2010; large studies of millions of children found no link. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/12/) — Herd immunity means that when most people are immune, a germ can't spread easily, protecting those who can't be vaccinated; for measles about 95 in every 100 people need to be immune. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/14/) — Smallpox killed hundreds of millions of people; after a worldwide vaccination campaign the last natural case was in 1977 and it was declared wiped out in 1980; this was possible because there was a good vaccine and smallpox lived only in people, with no animals to hide in. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/15/) — Polio can cause paralysis; vaccination has made it rare, and the wild virus is still found mainly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/16/) — Vaccines are tested in the lab and then in trials with thousands of people before approval, and their safety keeps being watched afterwards. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/17/) — Travellers to some countries need extra vaccines or medicines, such as against typhoid or yellow fever, and a travel nurse advises which ones. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/29-vaccinations-and-why/18/) — Some families worry about vaccines because of things they read online, and doctors and nurses answer their questions with the evidence. - ← previous: [The hospital ward, operations and anaesthetic](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/28-the-hospital-ward-operations-and-anaesthetic/) - next →: [Germs, the immune system and hand-washing](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/30-germs-the-immune-system-and-hand-washing/) - ↑ back to [Medicine](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/medicine/)