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> I think we’ve lived without these diseases for so long that some people (stupid, selfish people) simply think they don’t exist or pose a threat any more.

This is true beyond just vaccines. All too often hardships are forgotten, history is just old pictures and stories, and people who are too far disconnected from those real events and don't learn from history will just walk the same path, leading to the same hardships.

They all think that the world is better today so they're smarter or better than the old generations, that the world evolved so they're intrinsically prepared, so the pains of the past can't harm them. Ironically they're ignoring all the lessons and the tools that made the world better and are needed to keep it like that, and instead think things are better because they just are.

They'll skip any vaccines or support extremist regimes because they think the modern world is just immune to this, it's intrinsically and permanently "fixed". We have freedoms or don't get sick because we "just" have freedoms and don't get sick.

Having close family spending a lifetime paralyzed by the polio virus before a vaccine was widely available, or spending some of my life in the cold embrace of dictatorship really drove the point home for me about learning the lessons of history.