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Herd immunity is disease specific and there is no vaccine induced herd immunity for influenza [1]. In your particular case unless you are working with seriously ill (or old people) you are only endangering yourself by not getting vaccinated. For other diseases like pertussis herd immunity is critical to their success.

1. We actually do have an influenza vaccine that would provide herd immunity protection, but our regulatory system is so stuffed that it will never reach the market - this is another rant though.

I am not endangering myself. As I said above, I haven't had the flu in many years. That is prejudice and assumption talking.

I do remote work. Because of my genetic disorder, I have arranged my life to be able to avoid exposure to infection.

The need for herd immunity is posited on the premise that people have no choice but to be crammed together with large groups of unrelated people at school, work, etc. This is a) a very modern idea that did not exist all that long ago and b) not actually a given.

Unless you're suggesting that we all leave the cities and return to nature, it is actually a given for a lot of people.

Remote work is increasingly popular. I pursue it for reasons of germ control, but lots of people prefer remote work for various reasons.

It isn't a given. I spend my days in a large city. I just have freedom to get up and walk away from people coughing and sniffling, an option I did not have at my corporate job.

I don't bother getting flu vaccinations personally - if I get the flu I will deal with it, and feel like shit.

But that isn't the issue I have with anti-vaxxers:

They are against all vaccinations, even for things like fucking polio, smallpox, mumps, and they apply it to children, not themselves. They have the benefit of the vaccine, but decide their child is better off going the maverick route.

Polio is not the flu. You're not going to recover from polio with chicken soup and bed rest.

Do whatever the fuck your want to yourself, but refusing a child medically proven vaccines is child abuse, plain and simple.

Even worse when your unvaccinated child infects my vaccinated child (because vaccines are not perfect and we need herd immunity to make them effective) you have crossed the line from child abuse.

The solution to the problem of anti-vaxxers is simple. If you don't want to vaccinate then you need to take out a massive insurance policy to cover the risks you push onto the community. 99.9% of the anti-vaxxers when faced with a massive bill each year will find some mental contortion to make vaccinating OK.

>I sleep in a tent in the wilderness and I have minimal contact with people. I am not harming anyone and no one is catching my germs. (I also have not had the flu in many years.)

You're an outlier. You, in your tent out in the woods are not the problem. Thousands or tens of thousands of people sending their non-vaccinated children to schools and living in the same cities as everyone else weakening herd immunity is the problem.

It's not an issue of bodily autonomy versus freedom, it's an issue of bodily autonomy versus the likelihood of mass death.

We have a lot of mystery diseases currently that are occurring in large numbers. Autism is just one widespread issue of the modern world. Anti vaxxers believe at least some of these problems are being caused by the widespread use of vaccines.

Given that we don't really know what is causing them, pro vaxxers are not really in a position to argue that vaccines are not part of the problem. But, they do it anyway and are at least as closed minded as they accuse anti vaxxers of being.

>Anti vaxxers believe at least some of these problems are being caused by the widespread use of vaccines.

Great, but people believe a lot of things, so show me some evidence. Believing some vaccines to be harmful is, at least, a defensible (and scientifically testable) position. But that's not the same as believing vaccination as a whole should be avoided. Vaccines do work, and herd immunity is a thing. Even if we didn't truly understand the long-term ramifications of vaccines, we do already understand what happens in their absence.

Pro-vaxxers aren't being closed minded, we just don't want our children to have to worry about whooping cough and polio.

Your argument could use some work. You are basically saying that since we don't know everything, we should just behave as if we knew nothing.

No, that isn't what I am saying at all.

People here are talking to me as if I am an antivaxxer when I have said I am not. Pro vaxxers are just as blind, unthinking and extremist as anti vaxxers.

Both sides disregard valid points on the other side. This is the crux of the problem.

Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it. The world is not going to solve this conflict as long as it frames it in extremist either/or terms. The efforts to ramp up the pressure on anti vaxxers to conform merely deepens the conflict. It does not help the matter.

>Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it.

Appeal to authority. Also, Einstein wasn't an epidemiologist.

>The efforts to ramp up the pressure on anti vaxxers to conform merely deepens the conflict. It does not help the matter.

This is a serious claim, do you have any evidence to support it? I'd expect countries with culture that emphasizes the collective over the individual to have much lower rates of anti vaxxers, as compared e.g. to the US.

Most of anti vaxxer material I see here in Europe is poorly translated and almost universally originally intended for the anglophone market. The 'higher end products' are written by locals, but still heavily leaning on anglophone sources.

It is not an appeal to authority. It is citing my source.

I don't know what your beef is with me. As far as I can tell, both my comments make the same point: That pro vaxxers are just as extremist and close minded as anti vaxxers.

There are lots of people who have bad reactions to vaccines, who take some vaccines but not others, etc. who are not ideologues on the subject. The medical community has processes for dealing with the reality that some people react badly to vaccines and judgement calls need to be made. Pro vaxxers act like this is not a reality. Both camps are very all or nothing.

What we got here is a failure to communicate.

An appeal to authority is a type of fallacious argument; in attributing the quote to Einstein, your subtext is that his endorsement is your argument. But, of course, context-free quotes from Einstein aren't sufficient evidence of anything.

So I think vaccines are pretty useful, but against the flu? Seems like an overkill to me. I don't sleep in a tent in the wilderness, I live a medium sized city in Europe and I'd wager there's more people who don't get any sort of seasonal shots than people who do. Everything works just fine.

I've been forgoing the flu vax because of some sort of reaction to it a couple years running - I had never been so extremely sick with flu symptoms (or actual flu, I don't know for sure) then after taking annual flu shots. Now, I skip the flu vax and keep up on all other vaccines - so neither side is happy with me.

When I looked into it, the thing that bothers me about the flu vaccines vs most other vaccine formulations is that the flu vaccine is basically constructed every year as new from a mixture of flu strains. While they do have safety monitoring systems, and the way of replicating them is the same, the core portion is new. The safety monitoring is basically keep track of reports of side effects and try to detect if too many hit a warning threshhold. So between that, and my past experiences, I pass too.

For the other vaccines, I think I agree with especially school requirements for a standard set of vaccinations. I think that in CA they should go a bit further and limit ratios of students accepted with waivers at individual schools if it brings the numbers below that of needed for herd immunity benefits.

Edit: For the flu shots, it seems from my layman's reading of the literature that their efficacy is low and highly variant compared to other vaccines, enough that there is no consistent herd immunity to be gained from current flu formulations.

I homeschooled my sons. I am fine with schools et al having such requirements, as long as people have options to walk away from that system and make choices like homeschooling. That in no way means that some random stranger on the internet is more qualified than I am to judge what is best for my health.

Depends if that stranger is a doctor.

Also, if it's your children not getting the vaccines, it's their health, not yours.

Chances are you did have vaccinations as a kid.

No, being a doctor on the internet changes nothing. Exchanging a few comments online is no substitute for a medical exam, knowing my medical history, etc. Any doctor that imagines they know what is best for me merely because they are a doctor, without taking a medical history, etc, is a quack and a dangerous person.

I have certainly met such people online. You should be a lot more worried about the behavior of those folks online than about my personal health choices.