To vaccinate or not to vaccinate has become a national debate, due to the recent outbreak of measles that began at D land. Some parents have not shaken the fear brought on by the now discredited study that linked vaccines to autism, and the anecdotal "evidence " by those whose children have had reactions or what they believe to be damage due to the vaccines they received. I don't think any logic is going to dissuade those parents. (I know that some children are truly allergic to the vaccines or immune compromised and cannot be vaccinated, and they depend on the rest of us to keep them safe.)
However, the argument against vaccines that infuriates me to the point of wanting to reach into the newspaper or Internet and shake the perpetrators, is the one that makes the claim that vaccines are no longer needed, because the diseases involved have been irradicated ....and that the diseases only persist in"third world countries." What exactly do they think brought us to this point? Magic? God's will? Clean living? How about vaccines and modern medicine? One mother, even when brought to the facts said that she felt her children were strong enough to survive the illnesses because they were well fed and got plenty of sleep. She preferred to raise them in a more "natural and organic" way. I imagine that there was not a more natural and organic way of life that our early days of family farms. Yet the infant and toddler mortality rate was far higher than now. Children died of diphtheria, tetnus, pneumonia, measles, smallpox....all now preventable.
The parents who think that their children are safe enough in our "first world" country are eroding the very herd immunity that they rely on, and bringing doom to the weaker population like the infants or elderly who cannot survive the disease that their "healthy"child may pass to them as they survive it.
Worse than this misguided way of thinking is the idea that those that can survive the diease will survive due to their strength, health, and good genes, and those who don't fulfill Darwnian theory. I actually read one man's opinion that you are either immune or you are not. You die or you don't. Good God. The "the hell with the rest of you " theory of living in society. Like that man, I have several people in my ancestry that lived long lives in times when many died in infancy. That never caused me to think I was singled out by nature for special consideration. I cannot believe that if his child stepped in a rusty nail or was bitten by a rabid dog that he would tell them that if they were strong enough that they would survive it.
Willful ignorance or such arrogance is all well and good if you chose only for yourself or (Lord help them) your children. But choose to endanger the weaker because you are sure your kids are stronger than any formerly eradicated disease, and it becomes our business. Unless you intend to home school your children or never take them to a theme park, you are a threat and an invitation to these former scourges of childhood to return with a vengeance.
