Simpson College’s Culver Center hosted a Pizza and Policy event, which discussed opinions and facts about vaccines. The panel of speakers included Dr. Marianka Pille, registered nurse Paige Grochala and Professor Amy Doling.
The panelists began by giving general information on vaccines, such as why they work for humans. Doling discussed how humans have an adaptive immune system.
She also spoke on how the first time the human body comes into contact with a disease, it takes time to react; vaccines provide this first contact without actually giving the full impact of the disease.
“That’s the point of a vaccine is to establish that memory without disease,” Doling said.
Doling also discussed the idea of herd immunity, as a certain number of people being vaccinated will protect those who aren’t able to be.
Dr. Pille answered questions about the new guidelines in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations for vaccines. Pille said these recommendations ensure everybody has access to vaccinations.
“Weak recommendations trickle into now insurance won’t cover that vaccine,” Pille said. “If Medicare stops covering something everyone else will stop covering it.”
Pille stressed the downsides of this happening and pointed to the people who are not able to access vaccines.
“If they don’t get paid for by insurance they are expensive and people won’t be able to get them,” Pille said. “Even if they wanted to with all of their heart some people wouldn’t have access, it is scary.”
The panelists brought up Vaccines For Adults, which is a state-level initiative which provides vaccines for those either underinsured or uninsured. The panel highlighted how, before Sept. 2024, there was no way to vaccinate uninsured adults for free.
Grochala discussed how there has been a rise in religious exemptions to vaccinations and attributed this to how easily accessible exemption forms are.
“You don’t need a notary so people can find it online, print it and sign it,” Grochala said. “In 2021-2022 there were 250 in Warren County, now in 2025-2026 there are 457.”
Doling added upon speaking with religion professors, there are very few religions which actually bar immunizations, and said people use religious exemption as an easy way out from vaccinations.
First-year Nissa Molgaard attended the event and spoke on the portrayal of vaccines in the media.
“Things aren’t looking as bad as we normally see with the media, we tend to assume that because so much of the media around vaccines is bad that we correlate it to vaccines being bad,” Molgaard said. “It’s more of a media bias per se, we see more bad things so we assume bad things which can be debunked through data which the panel did a very good job of.”
