You think of vaccines purely in terms of their impact on the injected individual. You don’t seem to generally consider the value of population level vaccination rates in preventing the spread or impact of diseases on people other than you or your family members.
It’s a reasonable position, and I’m casting no moral judgement on you for it.
But, consider: Polio is a disease which is like the flu for the vast majority of cases. Child mortality rates are less than 5% of the 0.5% of cases who develop a central nervous system infection. Given those numbers, why should we vaccinate healthy kids against polio? The answer is not because vaccinating everyone ensures we prevent those cases from developing - it’s because vaccinating everyone wipes the disease out.
That same individualist perspective probably inclines you to think that other people’s vaccination decisions don’t have much impact on you, so you don’t particularly care if other people are antivax.
I would just encourage you to consider that vaccination is not entirely an individual choice and that the existence of a vocal antivax community reduces the value to our collective health that your family’s participation in regular vaccine schedules is supposed to buy. Your kids took the risk of those vaccines to help us maintain a herd immunity to measles, mumps, rubella and polio - but antivaxers who don’t participate in those programs and discourage such participation make that immunity more fragile.
The polio vaccine does not require frequent boosters. It is a different risk profile for a one-time shot vs a frequent injection. Risks compound, the benefits don't.
The polio vaccine is administered only in a segment of the population. If there is risk of, e.g, a "bad batch" of vaccines that could be fatal, we would be potentially causing harm to kids of a very-specific age. If we are talking about mass-vaccination every six months for everyone, the risk of a "bad batch" would lead to potentially everyone being harmed.
The polio vaccine has been administered for decades already. Its safety is not just measured by a bunch of lab tests. Its safety is proven in the field.
Polio is a disease that is somewhat stable. Covid started with high fatality rates (as it usually happens with any new virus entering a population) but will tend to become endemic and mutate to be less harmful, like other seasonal respiratory diseases. Again, I totally supported and encouraged high vaccination rates when its risks were unknown, but now we have more information and I don't see why we should treat it any differently than what we do with the flu.
You think of vaccines purely in terms of their impact on the injected individual. You don’t seem to generally consider the value of population level vaccination rates in preventing the spread or impact of diseases on people other than you or your family members.
It’s a reasonable position, and I’m casting no moral judgement on you for it.
But, consider: Polio is a disease which is like the flu for the vast majority of cases. Child mortality rates are less than 5% of the 0.5% of cases who develop a central nervous system infection. Given those numbers, why should we vaccinate healthy kids against polio? The answer is not because vaccinating everyone ensures we prevent those cases from developing - it’s because vaccinating everyone wipes the disease out.
That same individualist perspective probably inclines you to think that other people’s vaccination decisions don’t have much impact on you, so you don’t particularly care if other people are antivax.
I would just encourage you to consider that vaccination is not entirely an individual choice and that the existence of a vocal antivax community reduces the value to our collective health that your family’s participation in regular vaccine schedules is supposed to buy. Your kids took the risk of those vaccines to help us maintain a herd immunity to measles, mumps, rubella and polio - but antivaxers who don’t participate in those programs and discourage such participation make that immunity more fragile.