This persuasive speech argues that vaccine preventable deaths are an avoidable waste of life. The speaker, an immunization expert, has witnessed many needless child deaths firsthand. Promising children who could have contributed greatly to society succumbed to diseases like measles and rabies before age 5. While concerns about vaccine safety are understandable, one must seek information from credible sources and weigh the risks and benefits of vaccination versus the risks and benefits of disease. Opting out of vaccination is a gamble that could cost one's life, as the immunity can only be developed if one survives the disease. Together, through vaccination, we can minimize this waste of innocent lives.

1. PERSUASIVE SPEECH -
IS THE WASTE
AVOIDABLE?
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT IN
HEALTH, DEPARTMENT OF GLOBAL
HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Beckie Tagbo

2. The millions of innocent
children lost to vaccine
preventable diseases, how
long before we arrest it?
IS THE WASTE AVOIDABLE?
• Hello Everyone.
• I am Beckie Tagbo, an immunization field expert with
decades of experience in Vaccinology including
experience in field work, vaccine clinical trials, vaccine
research, training and mentoring of undergraduates,
postgraduates and immunization field implementers,
policies and advocacy, a professor of Pediatrics / child
health & Vaccinology.
• I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly.
One thing
continues to
bother me…

3. PROMISING CHILDREN
• Promising children who could have become country presidents,
UN Secretary Generals, World Bank Presidents, great inventors
and potential Nobel Prize winners who could have changed our
world in a way we may never know, because they succumbed to
diseases and death before their 5th birthday, deaths that could
have been prevented by vaccination!
I am a
practicing
Paediatrici
an /
clinician
I have watched
countless numbers
of innocent children
die needlessly from
easily costless
preventable deaths.

4. “OH NO, ANOTHER DEATH?
As I watch them come into the emergency room
moribund and I finally certify them dead after
fruitless efforts on resuscitation, I muse to myself…
“Oh no, another death? Poor baby! Poor
mother! What do I tell these parents?”
Very traumatic indeed to both doctor,
nurse and patient’s parents

5. I STILL REMEMBER HIM
1
I still remember him, a young boy. He had a dog bite weeks
back, was treated at a drug store but no further evaluation of
patient or dog was made and no rabies vaccine was given.
2
He then presents to me weeks later at the emergency room
with very high fever. Before you could say Jack Robinson,
all the signs of rabies disease began to manifest.
3
Soon after, the boy died! How terribly devastated I was.
… “if only he took the rabies vaccination!” I lamented.
What a waste!

6. “IF I RECOVER, I WILL TAKE THE COVID19 VACCINE…“
• Another case: “If I recover, I will take the
COVID19 vaccine…“, said a man who had
refused the vaccine but had come down
with severe COVID19 disease and was
admitted in the ICU.
• His wife had taken the vaccine and all her efforts in persuading
him to be vaccinated failed.
• But he did not survive the disease to have a second chance to
take the vaccination. He died at ICU
• It is people who are alive that take vaccinations not dead people

7. I AM WITH YOU IN YOUR CONCERNS
ABOUT VACCINES
• You need to be alive before you can mount immune response
to a disease or infection. If you succumb to the disease, too
bad! The issue of natural immunity no longer arises.
• Is the waste of lives avoidable? It becomes more devastating
if vaccination would have prevented this waste! It is even
worse if vaccination is available and parents failed to
vaccinate their child. Most devastating, if their reason is that
they do not believe in vaccination.
• Yes, I am with you in your concerns about vaccine safety and
other issues and experiences. It is perfectly normal and
human to have concerns about vaccination.

8. TAKE A STEP FURTHER TO SEEK
CLARIFICATION FROM CREDIBLE SOURCES
• However, do not stop there, go further to seek credible
information from credible sources to clarify your concerns
and then make the right decisions.
• Yes, you want to make the best choice for your health and
that of your family. We all do, not just concerns about
vaccination but about other products like drugs-
antibiotics, antimalarials, antihypertensives, anti-
inflammatory agents. Yes, we have concerns about their
safety and efficacy because we want to make the best
choices for our families and ourselves.

9. EVEN WATER HAS ADVERSE EVENTS!
• Can I remind you of the millions of lives lost in the pre-vaccination
era? People died in droves, millions. So should the waste
continue in the face of life-saving vaccines?
• What a waste it would have been to lose more than the 3million
lives currently saved annually by vaccination. More deaths could
be averted if we all rise to the occasion.
• I humbly request your permission to dialogue with you for a
moment. Is it not a gamble to opt out of vaccination on account of
potential adverse events?
• What is it that does not have side effects?
• Even water has adverse events!

10. COULD YOU WEIGH BENEFITS
AGAINST RISKS
• It could be a gamble to reject vaccination and accept antibiotics!
• What a gamble to opt in for antimalarials and antifugals and opt out
for vaccines. To opt in for steroids and organ transplants and opt out
of vaccination.
• It would be nice to weigh disease and vaccine benefits against their
risks for an informed decision
• We make life choices by weighing the benefits
against the risks because nothing made by
humans is perfect. Yes, we weigh the benefit
of drinking water versus risk of drinking water.
Benefit of flying in the air versus risk of flying…
of road travel, of surgery, of blood
transfusions, anti-asthma drugs, and so on.

11. ONE NEEDS TO BE ALIVE TO
DEVELOP IMMUNITY
• What a gamble to refuse immunity without disease while
accepting uncertain immunity with disease, that is, if you
survive the disease. Because a dead man does not develop
immunity. Yeah…
• What will be the benefit if the immunity-giving disease kills the
victim before he/she develops immunity?
• It sure has killed so many, aborting their lofty plans of
developing natural immunity.
• One needs to be alive to develop immunity.
• A dead man has zero immunity advantage.

12. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE
• What an irony to embrace air travels, sea travels and land
travels but hesitate to vaccinate!
• Millions die from road traffic accidents yearly and no one
hesitates or blinks an eye to hop into a car with all family
members to travel. Yet people hesitate to vaccinate?
• Even water has adverse events!
• Common, people, wake up and smell the coffee!
• Pinch yourself onto sound reasoning. You have your right
to make your life choices.

13. WHICH WEIGHS HEAVIER?
Vaccines
Risks
Benefits
Disease
Risks
Benefits
• It does not only benefit you but your family,
community, the vulnerable, and all of us.
• What a needless waste… but what a huge gain
if we all VACCINATE!
• Weigh the benefits of vaccination against the risks.
Weigh the benefits of diseases against the risks.
Then weigh the risks of suffering the disease
against the risk of vaccination.
• You would realize that weights are in favour of
vaccination.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/overview/public-health-threats/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/treatments-vaccines/vaccines-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines-development-evaluation-approval-monitoring

14. WE CAB FIGHT THIS NEEDLESS WASTE
TOGETHER
• Take side with safe and life
course vaccination and
actively support safe and
voluntary vaccination.
• Yes, we will vaccinate now
and again! We will take side
with life course vaccination!
• Together, we can minimize
this needless waste of
lives!
Beckie Tagbo
Nov 2021 Jesus saves