If Vaccines are safe and great, then folks should have no problem being convinced.
I wish. I wish it were really that easy. I wish we could sit Jenny McCarthy down in a room, show her a list of peer-reviewed science papers showing beyond any reasonable doubt that vaccines do not cause autism, and have her walk out saying, "Wow, that evidence is really convincing, thank you for changing my perspective!" If the world worked that like, it would be a better world.
But it doesn't.
The evidence is
overwhelmingly in favor of vaccines being safe and effective. And yet, when presented with this evidence, antivaxxers do not change their minds.
They double down.
They have little to no interest in changing their minds based on the evidence. This is an issue the medical community has been struggling with - not because the evidence isn't strong, not because it's somehow nuanced or complex, but because antivaxxers
refuse to listen to reason.
So given that, yeah, you'd
think in an open marketplace of ideas, a drug that makes you immune to deadly diseases while having a maybe 1:250,000 chance of a severe (but non-lethal) reaction would be an easy sell. But that's just not the world we live in.
And by the way? You sure are offering up a lot of classic antivax talking points...
And companies who make them should not need the immunity they have now.
No such immunity is granted. If your case fails in the VICP, you are entirely free to pursue it in federal courts. Of course, the VICP has a far lower standard for evidence, and if your case fails there, it's unlikely to make
any headway in federal court, but that's kind of your problem.
If you really believed vaccination worked you wouldn't have to worry about those who are not vaccinated.
There are a decent portion of people who are immunocompromised. The vaccine simply does not work for them, their immune system gains no benefit from it. The vaccines themselves are not 100% effective; the MMR jab, for example, boasts a 93% effectiveness rate at one dose, and a 97% effectiveness rate at two doses. But these vaccines don't just prevent you from catching the disease; they also prevent you from
spreading the disease. If everyone gets vaccinated, there simply aren't enough vectors for the disease to spread. It's called
herd immunity, and it's a pretty basic concept.
This is part of why it's so important to get everyone vaccinated: the more people are vaccinated, the fewer vectors there are to spread disease to those people for whom the vaccine didn't take or who simply cannot get the vaccine. In essence, it's not just a matter of personal choice. By not vaccinating, you don't just put your health at risk. You put the health of
everyone around you at risk. Hence why it's so important.
Of course they are potentially harmful to others which is why they spell out all the problems in inserts which doctors usually don't provide unless you ask for them.
Did you know that many people die in car crashes because they get stuck in their seatbelts, and can't free themselves? You know why we still mandate that people wear their seatbelts? Because the number of people whose lives are saved due to wearing a seatbelt absolutely
dwarfs the number of people who die because of seatbelt use.
Yes, there is some risk involved. Just like in any medical procedure. But I can't name a single person who died due to a vaccine. The serious side-effects of vaccines are so rare as to be virtually impossible to trace them to the vaccine, meaning that we're already giving the vaccines a worse rap than they should get. Meanwhile, measles killed more than 114,000 last year:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/
And those who want the benefits of those vaccines can be convinced.
So here's my question: do you consider these facts meaningful or important?
