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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> force you to put something else in your body that you thought was not in your best interests or that of your child?

It's not in the best interest of other children to let your children not be immunized.

One of the reasons immunizations work so well is because of herd immunity. The entire population doesn't need to be inoculated against every random mutation the virus will take. Enough of the population has good enough immunity that the virus can't take a foothold. But once you dip below a certain percentage, the virus gets free rein to spread and evolve again.

Effective immunization requires that we all mostly get immunized.

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You don't have to convince me. I know all this and I'm not an anti-vaxxer.

> It's not in the best interest of other children to let your children not be immunized.

This doesn't change my point at all.

First, the idea that my child should be subjected to something harmful because it's better for other children doesn't fly with me. I doubt it flies with anyone. I vaccinated my kid for her benefit and for everyone else's, but if the choice is "everyone else" or "my kid"... I don't think you have to be a parent to see how that one shakes out.

Second, that's not how anti-vaxxers see it. They see it as bad for those children as well.

>the idea that my child should be subjected to something harmful because it's better for other children doesn't fly with me

They aren't being subjected to something harmful, they falsely believe that it's something harmful because they saw an infographic on facebook

>that's not how anti-vaxxers see it. They see it as bad for those children as well.

Yes, and this kind of toxic stupidity should not be tolerated as it puts everyone else at risk

If you want to boil this down to black-and-white you need to compare the past, present, and future deaths of the anti-vax movement against the solution of 'not tolerating' anything that doesn't meet your utilitarian ideal. And that's aside from the moral aspects.

It is black and white. Everyone who can needs to vaccinate otherwise we loose herd immunity. Full stop. Vaccines benefit far more people then they negativity affect.

You cannot say some people are negatively affected AND say it is black and white.

You and authoritarian seem to be saying "anti-vaxxers are completely bad!" Well, congratulations. You're right. But no one here is arguing with you.

The issue is whether allowing people voice in influencing policy in a democracy is an absolute good if it means people like anti-vaxxers can still influence policy. I argued that from the point of view of an anti-vaxxer they are doing good, and that, you might find yourself in such a position one day. That's irrespective of whether the anti-vaxxers are right or wrong and if the hypothetical you is right or wrong.

And if it's not clear by now, (which it should be for anyone who read the thread): I'm not an anti-vaxxer; I'm not in favor of them; and nothing I've said here is in support of them.

Not an anti-vaxxer either, but it is absolutely not true that there is no potential harm from vaccination.

For one thing there's a risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome.

There's also an inherent risk with introducing anything at all into your body via needle -- where/how was it stored; what other quality controls were practiced?

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.

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.

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.

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.

That is flat out wrong that vaccines aren't harmful. We have programs at the federal level in place that track and document the harmful effects of vaccines, including deaths caused by them.

If you wish to support your position better, you need to acknowledge the worries people have, not be deceptively dismissive of real worries.

There is a very small portion of individuals who will have a bad reaction to vaccination and experience negative consequences up to and including death. These negatives are much much less than would be experienced by all people if the disease was allowed to thrive.

Its possible to imagine that given unlimited resources we could discover ahead of time whom might react so and avoid vaccinating them or further reduce such negatives but resources aren't unlimited so currently some die.

We are already killing some kids so that others may live and the majority already supports that as do I.

> There is a very small portion of individuals who will have a bad reaction to vaccination and experience negative consequences up to and including death. These negatives are much much less than would be experienced by all people if the disease was allowed to thrive.

This is very true, and there's no justifiable reason it should have been downvoted. The truth is more subtle than pro-vax or anti-vax dogma.

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