Um...wow...I feel like I'm in the middle of an Abbott and Costello comedy schtick. You've just made my point about herd immunity. It doesn't exist because the vaccine only protects the vaccinated. Herd immunity suggests that everyone else must be vaccinated in order for each individual vaccination to be effective. Thus you get comments like this:
I never cease to be amazed by willfully ignorant FReepers. Keep your un-vaccinated self and un-vaccinated child away from my family.
Now, I realize you yourself did not make this comment, but your herd immunity argument suggests you would be in agreement with it.
Once again - get your child vaccinated if you think it's right, but let me decide what is right for mine. My decision does not effect yours and vice versa.
Uh, no.
If I vaccinate my child, and he is unfortunate enough to be the 5-10% who does not develop immunity to the disease, and then he comes into contact with your kid who has the disease becuase you didn't vaccinate him, your decision directly affects me and my child.
Oops, I meant to address this in my previous post.
Yes, this is a free country. Except in the case of public health, which our government has always placed above individual freedom. Your freedom ends where it endangers the health of other people. And, if your particular religious beliefs prohibit medical intervention, and your kid gets sick, the government can step in and force you to have your kid treated, or take the kid away from you and place it in foster care where it will receive treatment. When we talk about vaccinations, it's not just your tenuous right to expose your kids to dangerous diseases that's under discussion, it's also about your right to endanger other people's kids. Some kids really do have medical issues that contraindicate vaccination, like compromised immune systems or cancers. Do you really have the right to endanger the lives of those kids because you're afraid of the one in one hundred thousand chance that your kid will have an allergic reaction to a vaccine?
Mild: low-grade fever, localized swelling or tenderness at the shot site, 1 in 4.
Moderate: seizure (1/14,000), prolonged crying (1/1000), high fever (1/16,000)
Severe: Long-term seizures, or brain damage, less than 1 in one million (and it is unclear that these are related to the vaccine)
Risk of death from contracting diphtheria, 5 to 40% (risk changes with age); from contracting tetanus, 48 to 73%; from contracting pertussis, about 1 in 500 with good hospital care, about 50% without hospital care.
Now you have already argued that people who are vaccinated may carry the disease, but what you've not noted is that tranmission is often related to symptoms (coughing, sneezing, etc.). Asymptomatic individuals are less likely to transmit many diseases than those who are are experiencing symptoms of the disease.