To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate

Influenza: Source: Wikimedia Commons 

Viruses occur in nature everywhere. After being deposited on a hard surface, according to the UK's National Health Service, Cold viruses can survive indoors for up to seven days, especially if the humidity is above 10 percent, according to Popular Science.

When you get vaccinated, your immune system is tuned and prepared for an attack by a specific strain of virus, so it can destroy the virus much more quickly than it would otherwise.

Viruses use your cells as factories to create more viruses, This process goes unnoticed in a person not vaccinated because the influenza virus only uses a small amount of a cell's RNA to reproduce, according to Science Daily. The immune system then reacts much more slowly. As a result, the symptoms of infection appear much later in the period during which an infected person is highly contagious.

Symptoms are not caused by the virus itself, but by the actions of the immune system trying to destroy the virus. In an attempt to rid the body of the virus, the body will produce copious amounts of mucus, and destroy the infected cells which will cause painful inflammation in the damaged tissues.

Vaccinated individuals will have little to no symptoms as their immune systems are at peak performance and will attack when there is very little infection, but that does not mean the viruses are not still hanging around somewhere nearby.

Whether you're vaccinated or not, the viruses are still there. It's a matter of choice whether or not you want to have severe symptoms lasting weeks, or little if any symptoms that last a few days at most.