[BryantD]

This is exactly the kind of discussion I was thinking of, FWIW. I tend to agree with this line of thought — responsibility is too diffuse in this case.

So... what are other options here? Cause it is definitely bad for the public if people stop vaccinating their kids. That’s not a risk, it’s a certainty. It is also fairly clear that a significant enough percentage of people will listen to anti-vaxxers no matter what, and they will move mountains to avoid vaccines.

[cortesoft]

I don't know if there is an option, at least not legislatively. Risk is so subjective, and trying to force people to be 'rational' in their risk assessment is futile. Even if we could force people to be rational, there is still the subjective nature of the 'value' of the risky behavior. I personally think BASE jumping is way too risky for me, but I wouldn't tell someone else that they are irrational for deciding it is worth it for them.

So what do we do? What we are currently doing, really. We try to educate people about vaccines, we pass laws saying unvaccinated kids can't go to public schools without a medical reason (which yes, that loophole will be exploited, but it is an improvement), and we work to reduce the risk as much as we can. We are never going to 'solve' the problem of people making risky decisions that hurt society as a whole, so we just do our best to mitigate where we can, and accept the rest of the risk as just part of being a human in society.