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> No medicine is 100% safe in all circumstances. Vaccines do have published risk of complications and while tiny are not zero and sometimes are greater than the risk of contracting the disease itself.

Yes. But the risk of a pandemic is the risk you are to compare with. Not the 1% risk of a side effect compared to a 0.01% risk of contracting the disease. Also: herd immunity means that those who can't take the vaccine are protected. Anyone who doesn't take e.g. the smallpox shot, is getting a free ride on those of us who DO take the shot. The reason they could dodge any side effect and STILL run almost 0% risk of getting smallpox, is because everyone else took the shot. I think this is what is lost on antivaxers. They think that the vaccine protects THEM and that they can thus weigh that benefit against the risk on THEM. But that's not how it works. Their shot protects ME.

> As a general rule, I don't want any government telling me what to put in my body or my kid's bodies.

As a general rule, I want my government to ensure the society is vaccinated. Government already tells you a lot of what you can and can't put in your body. Having them say you HAVE to put something is going one step further, but I don't see how it's a very big one.

> Vaccines are required for kids to come to public school in CA, but not required to go to placed where they're in even closer contact (sports, pools, etc.), why?

Presumably because of how laws work and how it might be legal for a school to require vaccines, but not another public location (perhaps because the school isn't a public place at all?).

> punishing dissent doesn't seem right.

Excellent point. Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.

> I think understanding that non-vaxers have legitimate concerns helps create a better solution than enforcement and blame.

I think it's important to meet their concerns with information. But we can never ever give parents the idea that vaccines are somehow a controversial idea. It's not.

> Their shot protects ME.

Just to be clear, herd immunity protects those who aren't vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, your community's vaccination or lack there of doesn't affect you.

> Give a tax break to those who vaccinate etc. instead.

Yes, despite all the down votes my comment isn't about who is right or wrong, it's about respecting the other side. Just because you want your government to make laws about having to put medicine in your body there are millions of libretarians that would disagree on principle no matter how glaring the health benefits. It's less about taking the vaccine and more about the judgement and punishment if they don't that actually makes them resist more, not less.

You can't get rid of guns by deamonizing those that own guns and you can't increase herd immunity by deamonizing anti-vaxxers.

So I really like your idea. Offer carrots and respect, not sticks and judgement.

Although herd immunity is good for the entire community, medical ethicists insist (for sound philosophical reasons) on requiring that any treatment be a good idea _for the patient themselves_.

For example, many countries began vaccinating young female children against HPV on the rationale that understanding of cervical cancer says if we prevent HPV infection we prevent almost all of this type of primary cancer, and the vaccine seems to prevent infection with some strains of HPV implicated in cancer.

Now, you can immediately see that vaccinating their male colleagues could induce herd immunity, this is almost always an STI. But ethically that doesn't justify classes of boys.

What did subsequently cause some countries to vaccinate boys was the fact that HPV also causes cancer in other places, and vaccinating the boys protects them against that. It's a narrower call (fewer cancer cases prevented) but for a relatively safe vaccine it can still make sense.

Edited to add: This gets interesting for a "Chickenpox Vaccine". The virus that causes Chickenpox in children (Varicella-zoster) has much nastier consequences in adults. So if we vaccinate children so they don't a nasty but rarely deadly illness, but as a result more adults get infected without prior exposure, that might suck... Different countries have made different choices about what to do here.

This. Nothing is 100% good or bad. The conversation on both sides has gotten laughably hyperbolic. Like any medical intervention the pros and cons of each vaccine need to be discussed rationally and with full informed consent for each patient. Other commenters posting outrage casting anti-vaxxing as mental derangement or child abuse are going to get as far as the worst kind of anti-vax rhetoric

If measles is more common now that anti-vax is more popular, that's a problem worth addressing. We had a known, working solution, so yeah, it does seem like child abuse.

> Vaccines do have published risk of complications

Yes, so the selfish will avoid the risk and free-ride on the herd immunity. In a society that is irrationally selfish, the government may reasonably choose to give incentives to vaccinate. For example, the vaccinations might be required for admission into government-paid health care, or the government could compensate victims of the side-effects with care, cash, etc.

How does society reconcile this "all opinions are valid" viewpoint with the fact that anti-vaxxers are actively putting others at risk due to reduced herd immunity? It's not theoretical -- we have data that shows outbreaks of "cured" diseases in places with reduced vaccination rates.

The same way we do with other topics: guns, alcohol, driving.

We'd be in less danger if no one did anything dangerous ever, but that doesn't leave much room for freedom.

It's extremely frustrating to see people doing something dangerous you disagree with, but it's likely that we all do it at some point.

No, this take is bad. We do not need to allow things where the outcome is purely bad in the name of "freedom".

If something looks "purely bad", you're probably polarized on the issue. There's usually positives and negatives to everything, even if one far outweighs the other in your mind or in the mind of the vast majority of people.

When you run into stiff resistance like the anti-vaxx movement, which has little economic incentive (I can't think of who profits by a kid not taking vaccines), it helps to be able to understand where their points make sense even if you don't agree.

Once you're that beyond right and wrong, then you can educate more effectively. I've had much more constructive dialogues with anti-vaxx people once they know that I understand how scary it is for a government to tell you you have to inject your kid with something you don't understand and doesn't feel necessary and might have risks.

I think if you grant them the courtesy that they could be right (which science and medicine has examples of being highly confident and then being wrong), that then they are more open to at least getting the highest recommended vaccines on their own volition.

Yet here we are with the ability to buy cigarettes, alcohol, and candy.

You mean outcomes like a 1 in 2 autism rate? Or how about all the infants that die during the night after their vaccine shots?

Hm, it's not a complete response to your point, but I think the comparison is possibly mismatched, given the inherent risks with anti-vaxers, herd immunity, and the larger population.

The actions of a few can seriously impact large populations. The multiplier effect is, potentially, significantly greater than with guns/alcohol/driving. (And even then, those arguably border on even more divisive debates that we should leave for another thread.)

Totally agree. The US has a history of protecting the rights of the individual over the rights of the group perhaps more so than other nations. There are benefits and risks to that and many other countries are experimenting with other ways of evaluating those conflicts.

I think where the point gets contentious with libertarians is that forcing them to do something feels far scarier and authoritarian to them than forcing them not to do something.

I agree that we're all connected though and the decisions we make impact those around us no matter how individual we think our actions might be.

We don't give guns to kids, we don't allow drunk people to drive, so why would we allow idiots to not vaccinate and harm everyone else? All opinions are not valid when one's opinion goes against established scientific fact. That really seems to be a point mostly lost on Americans who think their beliefs are equal to facts. If that was the case, we should let people who think they drive better drunk do so and give guns to four year olds because without a conscience, they'll have no qualms about using them. The above two scenarios are as absurd as allowing people to go around unvaccinated, infecting and killing others randomly.

> greater than the risk of contracting the disease itself.

This is a circular argument. In G7 countries with highly developed economies and medical systems, the reason why the risk of contracting a disease like mumps, rubella or polio is extremely rare is because almost everyone is vaccinated against them.

I'll offer a counterpoint. Some people have extremely adverse reactions with vaccines. Those who have predispositions that can lead to extreme reactions should be able to opt out of vaccination because they may in rare cases be more harm than good.

Now, most people should be vaccinated and those few that aren't should hopefully be protected by herd immunity.

To say that the quality medical systems and herd immunity decreasing the risk of those diseases nullifies the dangers of adverse reactions is a bit unfair.

To close, I agree that most everyone should be vaccinated and that philosophical beliefs are not valid reasons to avoid vaccination. I do disagree in that I believe that there are a number of rare situations where vaccination is legitimately more harmful than just relying on herd immunity.