There will always be a few unvaccinated children; some kids can't get vaccinated due to other issues. We don't need more people voluntarily exposing their own children to needless risk.

I think there has to be a level of tolerance which is justifiable by science and working around the issue by other means -- for instance only so many kids without a certain vaccine can be in the same peer group. Else you are a totalitarian and we've seen that this type of thinking produces problems.

Government-enforced mandatory vaccination is what really made inroads into smallpox, a disease which is now eradicated.

Respecting the "diversity" of opinions on the issue would have achieved the opposite.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not certain I'm comfortable with the idea of forcing parents to vaccinate their children either. There are serious issues with personal autonomy there. But please, please let's not fool ourselves with lies about how it might be for the best. That direction lies nothing but FUD and pseudoscience. The question is whether or not parents should be have the right to put their children at risk because they disagree with reality.

That level of tolerance has traditionally been given, but it has recently begun to be abused. A few fringe religious nuts who want to abstain from modern medicine are fine; they don't threaten herd immunity. However as soon as not vaccinating your children becomes the trendy thing for young parents to do, it can become necessary to take a hardline stance in order to protect those who do not have the luxury of choosing to be vaccinated.

How much of the population do you want to risk on a comeback by whooping cough or polio or smallpox?

You can/have to put the kids that don't have vaccines under a special surveillance and work around the issue. Should society subsidize those costs? Perhaps.

For their entire lives, though?

The potential damage of a viral pandemic is well documented and well known while the damage from vaccination seems, to say the least, controversial. I'm aware of one study linking vaccinations to autism having been debunked as a hoax, for instance[1].

[1]http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/29/vaccine-autism-conn...

  | damage from vaccination seems, to say the
  | least, controversial

Vaccines aren't 100% side-effect free. Combine the fact that the government shields manufacturers from liability for vaccines, and the fact that no one cares to collect statistics on side-effects from the vaccines, it's clear that no one wants to really evaluate the risks objectively. Presumably the side-effects are out-weighed by the benefits, but is there data to back this up? Not really.

I would expect that data regarding the rates of mortality from viruses over, say, the last century would be readily available somewhere.

So i'll suggest the null hypothesis -- assuming that vaccines do at least as much, if not more, harm than good (of which we're unaware because of politics and whatnot) then there should be evidence of lethality due to vaccinations on a scale approaching that of viral pandemics. The evidence of the good should be indisputible - how many people still get polio? The onus is on the other side to demonstrate harm.

Our government does this shielding because otherwise our legal system is so crazy no company would be selling vaccines in the US.

the fact that no one cares to collect statistics on side-effects from the vaccines

Doesn't the existence of a fund to cover those with really bad side effects suggest that we actually do have those statistics? They're certainly collected during FDA mandated testing, which is particularly extensive for vaccines because the tradeoffs are so stark, you're giving them to an generically healthy population, it's not a "take an antibiotic or die" kind of thing.

  | FDA mandated testing, which is particularly
  | extensive for vaccines

Is that really the case for the flu vaccines that they have to make 'on the fly' specific to each flu season and the new strains out there?

What about the other vaccines mentioned here, where children get 3 or 4 vaccines at once by convention? How do you know which ones are causing adverse reactions?

Yes, because the vaccines are the same year to year except for the precise seed strains used (and those are developed by specialists who provide some degree of regularity), which provide the precise sequences of amino acids that make up the two relevant viral proteins.

Otherwise they're as identical as possible, the least reasonable amount of chicken "stuff" left in, the preservatives used, etc. And I'm pretty sure there is some testing done before new batches are tried out on the whole population.

As for "how do you know which ones are causing adverse reactions", why do we care? I would assume if they're bad enough the child isn't given any more, so which causes what is irrelevant (remember, we know this is going to happen, these vaccines are licensed with that understanding). If less severe, I'm sure there are protocols to address this so the child can get further vaccinations with reasonable safety (e.g. you can test with a very small amount to see if one causes a reactions ... and, hmmm, that should do for the severe reactions as well).

You and others are ignoring those who's vaccinations don't "take", they silently don't result in a sufficient immune system response for whatever reasons. Herd immunity is the only thing protecting them since don't know ahead of time who they are (those who you know aren't protected can e.g. get a gamma globulin shot if exposure is suspected).