re: #60 The Vicious Babushka

Herd immunity - some diseases like measles are so infectious that you need nearly perfect immunization to prevent spread. There are people who can’t get immunized - infants, people who have compromised immunity, and vaccinations protect those folks too.

It protects everyone else.

For some diseases, it’s the difference between life and death - like polio or smallpox. We eradicated smallpox and are almost all the way there with polio but there are pockets of polio in the wild. Measles was virtually eliminated in the US until the antivaxxers latched on to the bogus MMR vaccine-autism link.

For other diseases, it’s a life or death or serious complications, like the flu. You can prevent/limit the spread, or even reduce how bad it’s going to hit you if you do get it (and you can get it despite getting vaccinated).

My personal take is that federal law should be enacted that all religious exceptions to vaccination are null and void because of public safety. Only way to avoid vaccination is if you are immune compromised. And it should be at the federal level because travel/transit means anyone can cross state lines and infect people (and we get stories about this regularly - like people who travel overseas, stop at multiple airports, and potentially expose thousands of people in the process).