The issue here is that these are parents making decisions for their minor children, not themselves. For example it has been ruled child abuse and illegal for Christian Scientists to deny their minor children life-saving medical treatment. The other issue here is that herd immunity or lack thereof can put other people's children at risk, not everyone is a responder to vaccination.

> it has been ruled child abuse and illegal for Christian Scientists to deny their minor children life-saving medical treatment

Yes it has. If I understand you correctly, you suggest that the treatment having a 0.01% chance of being live-saving also be considered in the same way.

Ethically yes, obviously it's many orders of magnitude worse to deny your septic child antibiotics than it is to not vaccinate them but in my view it's on the same spectrum. The data we have is all epidemiological, which is inherently somewhat fuzzy, however a plethora of well-designed studies have crunched the numbers different ways and absolutely no link can be found between rates of childhood vaccination and autism. Vaccination was considered one of the massive health breakthroughs of the 20th century. We have pretty much eradicated Hepatitis B for instance while it's still rampant in many Asian countries. From a Medical standpoint there is no valid reason not to vaccinate. I'm not advocating forcible vaccination and understand why that could make this hysteria worse however as a society we should examine where this misinformation is arising and how it's being amplified.

> From a Medical standpoint there is no valid reason not to vaccinate.

Currently, that is true. But medical opinion changes constantly. Is that really the proper domain of government?

If you're saying that the standard of 'reporting' on health and science in the media at large is often conflicting and distorted into a confusing and often contradictory form there is definitely validity in that. John Oliver has a great segment called 'Scientific Studies' I'll link at the end of this post, everyone should watch this. If you are able to read the journals directly and have studied how to critically evaluate scientific studies I can guarantee that there is significantly, like thousands-fold, more consistent information. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw

Shouldn’t the same argument be used to ban abortion?

No, because legally fetuses aren’t children.

Technically the earliest stages of pregnancy are more similar to cancer. Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-pregnancy-hel...

Another case where The Onion got there first: https://local.theonion.com/woman-overjoyed-by-giant-uterine-... :-)

Shakes fist at The Onion I'll scoop you one day!

Thank you, this is probably one of the more calm, rational pro-vaxx comments on this thread.

What might also help is research about what % of kids don't respond to vaccines so people who choose not to vaxx can better understand their impact.

The risk is overall low, often this debate gets hijacked by debating over degree of risk, which is impossible to exactly establish based on epidemiological data. All the data we have indicates no risk to vaccination, and some risk to not vaccinating. There are also swaths of the population that are on immune-suppressing meds for a wide range of illness, older people in general, and anyone else with a compromised immune system that also rely on herd immunity.

Edit: In case you were interested in hard data on non-responder rates here is that data: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr6007a1.htm

I'm pro-vaxx too, but the blowback for not wanting to go as far as forced vaccinations or debating the assertion that anti-vaxxers are child abusers is intense.

I hope we can learn from these intense political discussions that wether it's vaccinations, guns, MeToo, abortion, etc., if you skip the calm discussion of the facts and skip right to name calling, public shaming and advocating criminal prosecution, you've only succeeded in appealing to those who already agree with you.

So, what do we really want? To shame the other side or find compassion and common ground?

Unfortunately, if you look at all the anger getting upvoted, it's a very emotional discussion that probably will just alienate anyone who's on the fence or just starting to research things.

There are ways to encourage vaccination, without forcing them.