[fabian2k]

We know how many people died before we had vaccines, especially children. There is no argument here. We eradicated or almost eradicated a whole bunch of terrible diseases with vaccines.

What you're proposing here is simply murder. We know what would happen, many more people would die.

[_heimdall]

> Measles mortality fell markedly (>90%) from the 19th century to mid-20th century prior to introduction of measles vaccine or the widespread use of antibiotics for secondary bacterial infections [1][2] This story is similar for most infections we now vaccinate for, death rates were dropping dramatically years before vaccines were introduced.

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-inf... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Measles+mort...

[_heimdall]

What would make it murder?

I wouldn't propose that people should be stopped from taking a vaccine if they want it.

I'm a strong supporter of informed consent. In this context that simply means that people need to know the pros and cons of a vaccine, what isn't known or scientifically studied yet, and they can make their own mind up.

[fabian2k]

We know more people would die without vaccines. There is plenty of data on the classic vaccines. If you tell people something else you're lying.

And herd immunity protects those that can't be protected by vaccines, your "experiment" would put them at risk as well.

[_heimdall]

> We know more people would die without vaccines.

We don't keep up any relevant research to prove that out. Vaccine studies don't use placebo controls, meaning we only know how they compare against what is usually the last approved vaccine. If you tell people that we know for certain that more people would die today without a particular vaccine you're lying, we simply can't know that without testing it.

> And herd immunity protects those that can't be protected by vaccines, your "experiment" would put them at risk as well.

How can we know herd immunity works as we predict it should without testing it? Its an untested hypothesis, and that's totally fine if we're not willing to risk testing it. We can't act as though it is scientific fact at that point though, its a hypothesis that a large majority agree with but that has yet to be tested in any significant way.