[gotothrowaway]

Although some may be "turning" defensive against measles, there is a fairly large percentage that are aware of the risk of measles and simply consider the risk of vaccines higher.

Measles doesn't scare these people, for the most part, as they're confident they can fight the disease off.

The way vaccines are going, we can find a common cold vaccine, and any "outbreak" of the common cold will result in the same hysteria. The survival rate for measles is actually quite high. Schools are responding appropriately. People who know they're at risk are responding appropriately. This isn't going to turn into mass deaths.

I support the unpopular opinion that the growth of anti-vaxers is primarily caused by improvements in technology and a failure of modern medicine.

YouTube is filled with examples of "vaccine injuries" - ASPCA-style image slide shows of kids before and after receiving a vaccine. The effects are scary, and not proven uncorrelated to the vaccine itself. Antivax communities are more comfortable exposing their families to risk of measles than risk of the vaccine injury, despite the risk being much, much lower. This is irrational, but also understandable human behavior, since the prognosis is perceived to be worse in a vaccine injury case than in a measles case.

The recordkeeping of vaccine injuries are also horrible, so trying to make any rational, numbers-based argument is impossible.

Ultimately, the spread of vax-injury videos is no different than the spread of the Eric Garner video on facebook. That's something we never would have heard about 10 years ago, and would never have caused such a national uproar. People are acting irrationally despite the very low chance of being affected.

Bottom line - if you want to stop anti-vaxers, you need better prevention (pretty much elimination) of vaccine injuries. The anecdotal evidence against vaccines can't be on Youtube or people will continue to avoid them. Science is working on it, but we're not there yet. For now, I think we need to be realistic that measles and other "eradicated" diseases will have a growth in occurrences. Chances are we'll see very few deaths or long-term effects, though.

[hga]

"Bottom line - if you want to stop anti-vaxers, you need better prevention (pretty much elimination) of vaccine injuries."

This will never, ever, happen (prior to e.g. development of serious nanotech). For any given thing, if you expose enough people to it, you'll have some bad and generally fatal reactions. My sister caries some EpiPens in her purse because if her eldest son is exposed to tree nuts, he will die absent treatment. Every time you take a new drug, and the 2nd time since the first might sensitize you to it, you're taking a definite risk it will kill you dead.

ADDED REPLY: Since this has been flag killed as of now, to reply to your reply while I'm still in the edit window:

Emotionally charged arguments from these people ("your kids are putting my kids at risk!") are what I consider the least productive. That argument will never convince an anti-vaxer, who is usually only concerned about their families direct risk of vaccine injury.

The extreme of this is amoral familism (https://www.google.com/search?q=amoral+familism). That's a very bad direction for a society to turn, and should be resisted by any means that are necessary. E.g. echoing toomuchtodo's comment, but taking it to the extreme necessary to make it actually work, throwing these families into concentration camps into which food etc. is sent in and nothing comes out without being sterilized. Or exile, if any country is foolish enough to accept them.

[gotothrowaway]

I agree, and you can certainly base a pro-vax argument off of this opinion.

What frustrates me is that the vast majority of anti-vax critics are uninformed. Most insist that vaccine injuries do not exist. Several are unaware that immunocompromised or allergic patients cannot be given the vaccine. Emotionally charged arguments from these people ("your kids are putting my kids at risk!") are what I consider the least productive. That argument will never convince an anti-vaxer, who is usually only concerned about their families direct risk of vaccine injury. It's just two people with different viewpoints on how best to keep their families safe. And listening to the arguments feels a lot like listening to politicians.

Also I think it will happen, and I think this outbreak will end up putting pressure on science to make it happen. The bio people I've talked with think the answer is in individual gene therapy.

[toomuchtodo]

> Bottom line - if you want to stop anti-vaxers, you need better prevention (pretty much elimination) of vaccine injuries. The anecdotal evidence against vaccines can't be on Youtube or people will continue to avoid them. Science is working on it, but we're not there yet. For now, I think we need to be realistic that measles and other "eradicated" diseases will have a growth in occurrences. Chances are we'll see very few deaths or long-term effects, though.

Nope. You just legislate vaccines as mandatory for public venues (public school, workplaces, etc). You can opt-out, but pack your bags and leave the first world.

Humans are irrational creatures. Act accordingly.

[gotothrowaway]

Wondering if this is disagreeable or just unpopular. I've been talking to people on both sides, working to hone my stance since the measles outbreak. It's unfortunate but I think this is where we stand.

[hga]

Per my other comment, I'd use the word "stupid".

In that you're asking for the literally impossible given the current and foreseeable state of the art.

And comparing a often serious and deadly disease to the much less serious and deadly "common cold".

With no sign of knowledge of the principle of herd immunity, and how that's an argument to make to anti-vaxers. Right now, a particularly strong one: immunize your children or very appropriately get shunned.

Let me ask you this: how old are you? Are you young enough that neither you nor your parents remember the era when we didn't have vaccines against most of these diseases? I was born a couple of years before the first polio vaccine was approved, and my parents, my mother a RN, were very very glad they could immunize me and my younger siblings against many of the scourges of their lives.

ADDED REPLY: This is a dead (for now) topic, so I'll just point out you're ignoring the morbidity rate, especially the severe but non-fatal outcomes, which were seriously feared back the days. And unless Wikipedia is wrong, your fatality rate is off by 300, it's 3 per 1,000 cases in the years 1987-2000 in the US. In another part of the article, it says 1-2 deaths per 1,000 cases in developed countries.

[gotothrowaway]

Wiki suggests measles has 1 in 100000 mortality rate. It's really not a terrible prognosis, especially in the first world where the vast majority are not immunocompromised. More serious than a common cold, but I personally can't blame people for accepting that risk and using vaccine injuries as justification. I haven't found a way to present a convincing argument against them. Can you?

The best I have is that they're helping society. But putting kids at risk for the safety of others is not something many families are tempted to do. Think about the FDA recommendation against fish for pregnant woman. So many people took it too seriously that the FDA now has a minimum recommendation for fish.

What's really interesting is that several of these families, in addition to avoiding the vaccine, take any step possible to bolster their immune systems, thus trying to further reduce the chance of fatal prognosis. It's a totally non-western approach to medicine, and probably a Steve Jobs-level poor decision, but these people are fully conscious of the decision they're making, and are arguably acting rational given that decision.

So you're right, people are acting stupid. But I can't get too mad about it because it's predictable. We need to find a solution instead of just calling them stupid.

Yes I'm old enough. I don't think that really matters for this argument.