Why? The alternatives in pretty much all cases are death. Which side effect is better than your child being dead? Or mine for that matter because the collective you (not you personally) decided that risking polio was better than the 1 in 10 billion chance you had an adverse reaction to a vaccine.
We've literally eradicated diseases that could have wiped out the entire human race and now we've got idiots trying their hardest to bring them back.
If parents want to have the "choice" to vaccinate their children, then they should also be held legally liable for ANYONE that gets sick as a result of that choice. Whether it's their own kid or an outbreak in the area they live.
This is a very simplistic view given the probabilities involved. For a drastic example, consider a hypothetical treatment that can perfectly prevent a disease that would otherwise kill 1% of those who are treated, but it will blind 100% of them. It's hard to argue that this is a better outcome.
Making up completely ridiculous examples to just justify anti-vaxxer idiocy should stay on Facebook.
Quick Google Search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22989339
Reversable - the tiny chance of a reversable condition vs contributing to the death of others. Can you be more selfish?
You 1) Moving the goalposts 2) Illicit Major 3) Ad hominem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
Is this a serious claim about currently-required vaccines? Including the one for varicella, say?
Vaccines have a _lot_ of benefits; my kids are certainly vaccinated for all sorts of things (including varicella, though that was a bit of a tough call for me). But overselling those benefits with blanket claims like "the alternative to being vaccinated is death" is not a good way to get the "everyone should be vaccinated" position to be taken seriously.
This seems like a huge exaggeration to me. There's a chickenpox vaccine nowadays which wasn't widely available when I was a kid. As a result, my siblings and I all contracted chickenpox at one point or another. Chickenpox is only very rarely a serious illness for children.
Even with regard to more serious illnesses that have been made rare by vaccination (measles and mumps), death is quite rare (less than 1% according to wikipedia).
Overall, I find your tone a bit disturbing. I'm very pro-vaccine, but I sometimes wonder if a kinder, gentler approach wouldn't be more effective. When you yell at people, they are much less likely to listen to you. When you use dishonest arguments like you've done here you just provide anti-vaxxers with ammunition.
This is exactly what I wrote, isn't it? The person I was responding to wrote:
> The alternatives in pretty much all cases are death. Which side effect is better than your child being dead?
I'm not arguing against vaccinations. I'm arguing against exaggeration.
And some vaccines are not a big deal for most children but can outright kill others.
Don't you think a scientific view of the cost/benefits of vaccines should be common narrative?
3) What danger do un-vaccinated children pose to vaccinated ones?
Further, as few vaccines are 100% effective, the herd immunity also limits the exposure of viruses to those for whom the vaccine was ineffective.
So with anti-vaxxers increasing from roughly .5% to 1.5% over the last 10 years or so, that introduces a significant increase in the requirement of vaccination effectiveness, to the point where you wonder are we close to herd immunity breaking down.
In places with significant anti-vax sentiments, such as ultra-orthodox religious practices you will get those larger outbreaks of things like measles.
In general I think research indicates in the general populous anti-vaxxer populations are still small and disparate enough as to not impact herd immunity, but the trend has been upward due to the anti-vax trend over the last decade.
[source] am married to an M.D. that specialized in microbiology, recently listened to a good NPR bit about it that dropped the statistics, and I stayed at a holiday inn express last night.
It's herd immunity but it only works if the vaccination rate is sufficiently high.
There are a number of doctors I have heard from that say vaccines can cause all kinds of debilitating side effects. But even "questioning" the status quo will get you down-votes, ridicule and draw ad homenim attacks.
If you disagree with these doctors, why?
Dr. Richard Halvorsen (England)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM
Dr. Suzanne Humphries (USA)
Why would people be paying for this? There are probably millions of people out there who would be willing to say something similar without payment.
Vaccines aren't 100% safe, there's been something like $4 billion paid out in compensation for them, and to get compensation you have to legally absolve them of liability and keep the media out of it!
But by pushing the narrative and ridiculing anyone who asks legitimate questions the pharmaceutical companies bury that and no-one wants to be branded as an 'anti-vaxxer' so they keep their mouths shut.
https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/data/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...
It's very similar to how the tobacco industry (and the sugar industry even earlier and the coal companies) manipulate the media take this study for example: ( https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/vaccines-autis... )
They studied 650,000 people. But injuries from vaccines are about 1 in one million, so the study was designed to fail but it got the press coverage!
edit: formatting
On the other hand, there is hormonal contraception, which is indeed a great profit center, because people need it every day (or a hormonal IUD, which is good for 3-5 years, but also a lot more expensive).
And now read news reports about all the nasty side effects of the pill. There was a big shift around 2016 and since then, there are media reports all the time. Nothing is put under the carpet here, although I think, economically speaking, it would make much more sense to “manipulate the media” that hormonal contraceptives have no side effects than manipulating the media about vaccines.
And the number of people affected is even less than with vaccines (only women in a certain age and not all of them vs. basically all children and many adults). So it should even be easier to manipulate the media about the non-existence of side-effects of the pill (of which stuff like thrombosis is deadly).
I know, just because one thing isn’t manipulated, everything about vaccines could still be manipulated, but I don’t buy it. Follow the money – doesn’t seem that lucrative.
Two points:
1) What is the specific list of immunizations that are being mandated?
2) If immunizations are to be mandated, great, however the companies that produce them must also be mandated to be transparent in their research and development.
For example, they must be required by law to publish all studies on drug safety-- both positive, and negative results. That's currently not required, they're allowed to cherry-pick results!