Aside from TB, you could also call this "the tragedy of vaccination": vaccination causes the incidence of a life-threatening disease to become so low that people consider the vaccine to cause more harm than it prevents - until the vaccination rate becomes so low that the life-threatening disease is back.
But if they also wrote genetic algorithms from scratch, and understood natural selection, they would also understand the concepts of selection pressure, and use it or lose it.
If they then also understood that 90% - 95% of the population effectively has natural immunity, they would seriously question the ethics of vaccination.
Should a number of generations be allowed to profit from the benefits of vaccination at the cost of a loss of natural immunity in the group? Are future members of the group less entitled to this ~95% immunity, because the current generations prefer ( 100% minus epsilon ) artificial immunity?
Its easy to win a referendum in the advantage of the existing population at the cost of future populations, if those future populations aren't born yet to contest and vote against it.
From Wikipedia page on Tuberculosis:
> Roughly one-quarter of the world's population has been infected with M. tuberculosis,[6] with new infections occurring in about 1% of the population each year.[11] However, most infections with M. tuberculosis do not cause disease,[169] and 90–95% of infections remain asymptomatic.[87]
From the above it is clear that vaccination programs for TB should be strictly considered private healthcare since it can help specific individuals at the cost of collective fitness vis-a-vis TB. Governments collectivizing private medicine at the cost of group fitness ranks among the most populistic things in existence. Think of how communist systems justify their methods by emphasizing doctors and medical systems.
What exactly does the ethical axiomatization of a collective thought system look like when they look down on the ~95% natural immunity handed to them from the prior generations and simultaneously have no qualms to hand down a lower percentage of natural immunity to the next generations!
I believe they have this mistaken gut feeling that their decisions can be rationally axiomatized, more out of group think and delegation "others smarter than me are choosing this so it is probably rational"; and they are simply unaware of the fundamental inconsistencies they manifest.
Tax payer money ought not be spent on reducing the natural immunity of its taxated population, regardless of how confronting it may be to explain to the population how a lot of methods in medicine were started long before the consensus on natural selection as the origin of life and fitness took hold.
>If they then also understood that 90% - 95% of the population effectively has natural immunity, they would seriously question the ethics of vaccination.
Your premise is flawed as this is a misinterpretation of what the data actually states. The statistic refers to the fact that most infections do not cause active disease. This is not the same as having "immunity." Rather, it indicates that the immune system in most individuals can contain the bacteria without eradicating it, resulting in a latent infection. Latent TB can become active under certain conditions, such as immunosuppression or aging.
Vaccination does not reduce natural immunity but aims to prevent the most severe manifestations of TB which can be fatal.
Your wider point re: the ethical argument against vaccination presumes that exposing populations to preventable diseases is acceptable to preserve a theoretical "natural immunity." However, ethics in public health prioritize the reduction of preventable harm. Sacrificing lives and health for a purist notion of "natural selection" disregards the suffering of individuals and the societal costs of disease.
If anything, the ethical failure lies in allowing preventable diseases to cause harm when safe, effective interventions exist. Future generations will inherit a world shaped by the decisions we make today. A world with widespread vaccination is one where fewer children die, fewer families suffer, and societies thrive.
