Not vaccinating when everyone else is vaccinated is indeed a more advantageous game strategy, because there is no risk to die from the virus, and no risk to die from a mistake. The problem is that if enough people take that strategy, there will be no herd immunity and chance of dying from virus will become much larger than chance of dying from a mistake ever was.

The sentiment against anti-vaxxers is not simply because people do not empathise with the fears of anti-vaxxers, but because anti-vaxxers refuse to take the small risk everyone else is taking, and in doing so endanger other people who could not get vaccination because of other illness.

>and in doing so endanger other people who could not get vaccination because of other illness.

Right, just look at the number of people dying from Scarlet Fever because of the low rate of vaccination.

I suspect every one of us has had a relative or friend injured or killed in a transportation accident. Do you walk everywhere?

And what about if your baby dies from measles because you didn't vaccinate them? What if the baby that died was a relative? Your neighbor next door? You coworkers baby? You might question the sanity of anti-vaxxers after that.

Worse yet, what if your baby can't get the vaccine because they have another disease that precludes getting a vaccine? What if your baby dies because there isn't any more herd immunity?

Two babies dying in 2018 from a wrongly-mixed vaccine is a travesty, but that was a medical mistake. Thousands of babies dying because of ignorance and arrogance is the real sin.

The problem with arguing against anti-vaxxers is the disconnect between vaccinations and the lives they save.

Proper vaccination is entirely invisible. When people die due to a vaccination not being 100% effective or due to a bad reaction, people claim it's useless. Then more people stop vaccinating, which then hurts herd immunity and makes the vaccine less effective which then causes more people to not take it and start a nasty cycle.

You can't point to the lives vaccines have saved until you have a travesty caused by people not being vaccinated. Unfortunately this cycle will likely make completely eradicating diseases in the future really difficult without compulsory vaccinations.

>Proper vaccination is entirely invisible.

Everything may as well be invisible if you refuse to look at it. There have been very, very few studies done on the long term effects of vaccines. All the general public knows is that the CDC [1] assures them that they "know there is not a plausible biologic reason to believe vaccines would cause any serious long-term effects." [2]

The widespread belief in the correctness of this almost entirely untested hypothesis is worth tens of billions of dollars per year to private corporations, by the way.

[1]: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/452654-for-... [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/tools/parents-guide/par...

The vaccination debate makes me sad and pessimistic. I am an avid proponent of vaccination in general but also of people's right to refuse them.

It's remarkable that things like Tuskegee are so quickly forgotten, and upsetting to me how quickly the issues become so oversimplified. I feel alienated in believing education, transparency, and rewards for prosocial behavior are the best way forward.

I'm not sure I follow the connection to Tuskegee (I assume you're referring to the syphilis experiment?)

What a gross, disingenuous framing. 'Vaccines' did not kill them. One specific instance of medical malpractice did. You should be worried about the specific people and companies involved in that incident. Being worried about all vaccines everywhere in the world because of this is completely irrational.

Those children didn't die from a vaccine, and you're fundamentally wrong to imply that they did. They died because of human error administering a vaccine. If you put some vaccine into a bullet and then shoot someone in the face with it, they died because they got shot in the face, not because vaccines are dangerous.

Of course things can go wrong in medicine, but that's not related to vaccines. If this is the kind of concern you have, you should never allow any doctor to put a needle in you, because it might be contaminated with something. You also shouldn't take any medications prescribed by a doctor because the pharmacist might mix them up with something. You certainly shouldn't ever have surgery, because the surgeon might misread the chart and perform the wrong procedure. Of course errors are possible in medicine, but that doesn't mean that needles/medications/surgery are inherently dangerous, it just means that human error happens. If you choose to never use healthcare for that reason, then you're wildly irrational (which is fine, just don't harm children because of your wild irrationality).

I hear what you are saying in the first paragraph. But it doesn't logically support what you state in your second paragraph. I can question the medications that I am prescribed and choose to take them or not. I can decide to get the surgery or I can decide not to or I can get another opinion. It doesnt have to be an all or nothing decision.

Edited to add: The issue in this story is that someone is spreading false information and people are acting on it and people are dying. Truly sad.

> Those children didn't die from a vaccine, ... They died because of human error administering a vaccine.

This is a bad argument and does not work in practice, because people perceive it as a language trick. If a child was vaccinated and then died in a result of the process, most people call it "die from a vaccine" independently from the mechanism. Trying to make the risk of the process look smaller than it is by focusing attention on technical details makes conspirologically minded people who do not understand the details even more suspicious.

In other cases you mention people go to doctor, because they can clearly see that not going is way more risky. So a better argument is to remind them that if enough people choose to skip the vaccine the danger from the virus will be much higher than the danger of nurse making a mistake.