Google searches: What information is available?
Today’s investigation was based on the google search “Should I get vaccinated?” I chose to look into this question based on curiosity. I wanted to know if when the average person googles this do they receive pro or anti vaccine information. My assumption was there would be a mix of both.
So – what have I discovered? The first six google searches were pro vaccination. Furthermore each of these sources are reputable government organizations that provide scientific evidence on why you should get vaccinated.
The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases website highlights 10 reasons to get vaccinated including
- Vaccine-preventable diseases have not gone away
- Vaccines help keep you healthy
- Vaccines are as important to your overall health as diet and exercise
- Vaccination can mean the difference between life and death
- Vaccines are safer than the diseases they prevent
- Vaccines do not cause disease
- Young and healthy people can get very sick, too
- Vaccine-preventable diseases can be expensive
- When you get sick, your children, grandchildren, and parents may also be at risk
- Your family and co-workers need you
This website provides 10 reasons on why people should stay up to date and get vaccines. One critique of this website is that although they include reasons on why we should get vaccinated they do not include evidence for each of their claims. Some of them are backed up through evidence but I believe that the average person would benefit from statistics in order to understand the claims being made.
The mayo clinic website provides information for adult vaccinations. They include factors that might affect vaccination recommendations including age, health history, travel destinations, sexual activity, lifestyle, occupation, and previous vaccine history. They then go on to give information to how to find out if your vaccinations are up to date and where you may obtain previous vaccine history. Finally they include a short list of common vaccines with center for disease control recommendations and ages that the common vaccines are given. An example of this is the Human papillomavirus vaccine ” The CDC recommends the HPV vaccine for children at ages 11 or 12. But if you didn’t receive the HPV vaccine at that time, you can get it later as a teen or as a young adult. It’s recommended for everyone through age 26. The HPV vaccine also may be useful for some adults ages 27 through 45. If you’re in that age group and you haven’t received the HPV vaccine, talk to your healthcare professional to see if it might be right for you. HPV is a common virus that can cause cancer”.
The Government of Canada link highlights the who, what, how, and why of the COVID-19 vaccine as well as the epidemiology. The what section includes what corona virus is, who is susceptible, vaccine side effects and its targets. The who section is a deeper explanation of what people are susceptible to covid and who is recommended to get vaccinated. The how sections explains how the dosages work based on age group and the scheduling of booster shots operates. The why section includes a short excerpt on why people should get vaccinated and the epidemiology includes a disease description including the transmission, variants of concern, and risk factors of the illness. This websites contains all necessary information for people wondering anything about the disease and vaccine. It is extremely comprehensive and answers a vast majority of commonly asked questions.
This website highlights the perfect amount of information, statistics and research that any person need when making decisions on vaccinations. Including information on where to get vaccination records is a brilliant add on to this page as people may often be unfamiliar on where to obtain this information.
The entire first page of the google search includes reasons to get vaccinated which is really important as it hides any anti vaccination websites that may be including false information or propaganda. The first page of a google search is quite important as most people, including myself, do not go beyond this when looking for answers. If using google to look for health information it is really important to look at government and reputable websites that include research and data for health decisions. It should be important to note that if you do a deep dive on health information that you should be wary of sites that are not major health organizations and do not include scientific data or official recommendations.