For the record...
I'm autistic and support vaccines. The risks are so low, the benefits so great, and large-scale participation is so crucial, that I believe vaccination should be enforced by law.
The risks are not zero, but many people seem to think that by avoiding vaccines, one can avoid the risks. In reality, one is choosing between two sets of risks: The risk of vaccinating nearly everyone, and the risk of disease that spreads when vaccination rates drop too low. The risks of not vaccinating are greater. If we let the vaccinated population go below the threshold where the disease can spread, we already know what will happen, because it happened before we had vaccines.
With the return of vaccine-preventable diseases would come an increase in childhood mortality. The youngest infants would be most vulnerable. Those with disabilities or chronic illnesses would die at high rates; children with asthma would die from diseases that attacked their lungs, cancer survivors with compromised immune systems would die because they could not fight the illnesses. And completely healthy children would die just because they caught a particularly bad strain of the illness. Poor children would die at higher rates than rich children because of higher rates of malnutrition and lower access to medical care.
Some people would die, but many more would sustain permanent injury from vaccine-preventable illness. Brain damage from measles encephalitis can range from mild to profound. Mumps can cause sterility. Polio can paralyze the muscles, and even years later those who were thought recovered can weaken again due to post-polio syndrome. Ironically, congenital rubella syndrome can cause autism along with other, deadlier, health problems. Even influenza can permanently damage the respiratory system.
Oh, and the economic effects--not as important, but still present. Children would miss school and fall behind; work hours would be lost when adults were sick or stayed home with sick children. People with disease-related disabilities would work less or not at all. Modern medicine would raise survival rates from vaccine-preventable illnesses higher than they were before vaccines, but medical care isn't free; when a child is hospitalized for whooping cough, their parents would have to pay the hospital bills, and if the parents couldn't pay, taxes would have to be raised to cover the cost. Even if you think to yourself, "Well, it's just money; money isn't as important as people," think of the things we'd have to skimp on to afford these essentially unnecessary medical costs: Schools. Libraries. Roads. Salaries for police, firefighters, teachers. Those are important things.
Those are the risks of not vaccinating, and they need to be balanced against the risks of vaccination. Healthy people should be vaccinated; those few percent who can remain unvaccinated without risking epidemics should be reserved for those who cannot be vaccinated or for whom vaccines would be ineffective. For me, the decision is easy because the risks of not enforcing vaccinations are so extreme compared to the risks of large-scale public vaccination programs.
Yet many people still fall for the lure of being perfectly safe from vaccine side effects. They are like people sitting in a rowboat who are so afraid of getting splinters that they jump out and into piranha-infested waters.
The risks are not zero, but many people seem to think that by avoiding vaccines, one can avoid the risks. In reality, one is choosing between two sets of risks: The risk of vaccinating nearly everyone, and the risk of disease that spreads when vaccination rates drop too low. The risks of not vaccinating are greater. If we let the vaccinated population go below the threshold where the disease can spread, we already know what will happen, because it happened before we had vaccines.
With the return of vaccine-preventable diseases would come an increase in childhood mortality. The youngest infants would be most vulnerable. Those with disabilities or chronic illnesses would die at high rates; children with asthma would die from diseases that attacked their lungs, cancer survivors with compromised immune systems would die because they could not fight the illnesses. And completely healthy children would die just because they caught a particularly bad strain of the illness. Poor children would die at higher rates than rich children because of higher rates of malnutrition and lower access to medical care.
Some people would die, but many more would sustain permanent injury from vaccine-preventable illness. Brain damage from measles encephalitis can range from mild to profound. Mumps can cause sterility. Polio can paralyze the muscles, and even years later those who were thought recovered can weaken again due to post-polio syndrome. Ironically, congenital rubella syndrome can cause autism along with other, deadlier, health problems. Even influenza can permanently damage the respiratory system.
Oh, and the economic effects--not as important, but still present. Children would miss school and fall behind; work hours would be lost when adults were sick or stayed home with sick children. People with disease-related disabilities would work less or not at all. Modern medicine would raise survival rates from vaccine-preventable illnesses higher than they were before vaccines, but medical care isn't free; when a child is hospitalized for whooping cough, their parents would have to pay the hospital bills, and if the parents couldn't pay, taxes would have to be raised to cover the cost. Even if you think to yourself, "Well, it's just money; money isn't as important as people," think of the things we'd have to skimp on to afford these essentially unnecessary medical costs: Schools. Libraries. Roads. Salaries for police, firefighters, teachers. Those are important things.
Those are the risks of not vaccinating, and they need to be balanced against the risks of vaccination. Healthy people should be vaccinated; those few percent who can remain unvaccinated without risking epidemics should be reserved for those who cannot be vaccinated or for whom vaccines would be ineffective. For me, the decision is easy because the risks of not enforcing vaccinations are so extreme compared to the risks of large-scale public vaccination programs.
Yet many people still fall for the lure of being perfectly safe from vaccine side effects. They are like people sitting in a rowboat who are so afraid of getting splinters that they jump out and into piranha-infested waters.