Do you think there is more potential harm, both to an individual and to the people they come in contact with, from getting vaccinated or not getting vaccinated?

Of course getting vaccinated is the better option.

But that's not the question here. The question is whether someone should be forced to be vaccinated.

Not sure why this concept is so hard to get across.

It's not that respondents don't understand your position its because as a group we can't afford to accept it. The negative effects of abstaining from vaccination aren't felt merely by the families they are felt by everyone.

The 90% can't afford to let the 10% have their own way when it would hurt everyone. In other news you aren't allowed to do all sorts of things on your own property that threaten your neighbors safety.

> It's not that respondents don't understand your position ..

You're still not getting it. I don't have that position.

If children wish to go to a publicly-funded school and come into close contact with other children, then they should be vaccinated. Period.

If you want an exception for your child, then privately educate them.

The chilling effect you're seeing on your devil's advocate arguments are because anti-vaxxers have caused so much harm with their pseudoscience. There is no room for playing nice or entertaining a middle ground.

The government has stepped in and made public health choices for us already. For instance, we chlorinated and fluoridated the public water supply. If you want to drink bottled water, that's fine. This isn't even a powerful enough analogy though, because vaccination doesn't just impact individuals. Every act of rejection lowers the fitness of the population.

echelon, I agree with everything you write here.

Which tells me you're still not getting my point.

I don't understand the brouhaha around anti-vaxxers.

If some minority of children aren't vaccinated, how is that a threat to the rest who are? What's the point of the vaccinations if they aren't effective at protecting the vaccinated from the diseases carried by those who aren't?

I must be missing something, because it just looks like people meddling in the affairs of others. If a parent wants to have non-vaccinated children, I don't see how it's any different than a parent letting their children grow obese. It's their problem, live and let live.

You are missing herd-immunity.

A vaccine that only conveys, say, 20% protection to individuals can still convey ~100% protection to a group by tipping disease story from "spreads exponentially" (average_new_infects_per_person > 1.0) to "fizzles out" (average_new_infects_per_person < 1.0). That's called herd immunity. Even a modest minority of anti-vaxxers can sabotage herd immunity, leaving the rest of us with only the vaccine's individual protection margin.

Isn't herd-immunity concerned with those who aren't immune, so in this case, who aren't vaccinated?

Which just brings us back to worrying about the concerns of others.

What does herd immunity have to do with the lives of the vaccinated?

No because no vaccine protects everyone 100%. There are the young as of yet unvaccinated, the old, immunocompromised individuals and even those who are vaccinated can still actually get the virus just with far less likelihood.

An increasingly large population of infected risks giving the virus a foothold first in vulnerable populations, then in everyone especially as mutations in an increasingly large reservoir provide exponentially more chances to find more effective forms that bypass existing immunity.

A minority of stupid people can put everyone at risk. Ultimately diseases continue to wipe out species. There is no particular reason to suppose we are immune to calamity just because we have better tools to respond to it than dumb animals.