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?
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.