Infant girl with whooping cough

> The counter point (to that convenient strawman :) ) is that the chances of someone getting ill are not as easy to determine and that that someone might have gotten ill anyway. Cause and effect are a lot more distant in that case and much harder to relate to each other. This is wishy-washy logic. There are real evidence/data-based scientific studies that show the specific measurable increase in infections of various diseases based on how many members of the population refuse the available vaccines. There have been flare-ups in California with dozens of people becoming infected (and some dying) when herd immunity is lost. This is not hypothetical; it is simply fact. Similarly, it's hard to say whether any individual pack-a-day smoker will die from lung cancer, but we know that, in aggregate, smoking significantly increases your risks of dying from lung cancer, so to make wishy-washy statements attempting to justify smoking as maybe not unhealthy would similarly fall on deaf ears. And lastly -- this isn't all theoretical. I want you to watch a video of an infant, too young for vaccination, that has contracted whooping cough thanks to failure of herd immunity (i.e. anti-vaxxers). Even with all the benefits of modern medicine there is a good chance that infants like this one that contract whooping cough will die. This is what enabling anti-vaxxers does: [this video]

> Instead, he's raising the subtler (and I think reasonable) issue of whether despite the societal benefit there may be individuals within the population for whom the risk/reward ratio is reversed. FWIW, this is a variant of a debate tactic known as "just asking questions" (on rationalwiki) or the "loaded question" (wikipedia). I won't accuse ~Varcht of doing this intentionally, because I don't know them well enough to assume bad faith, but the end result is the same: the question, appearing innocent enough, is based on false premises and derails the conversation. It's especially common coming from people who have been misinformed on some controversial subject and have developed vague doubts towards established science on that subject, but don't have a sufficient library of information at-hand to argue directly. Instead, they just try to raise the same doubts in others. Their conversations follow the form, "Okay, but what if...?" It works because people in civilized forums don't want to be seen as unkind towards people asking innocent-looking questions. For instance, here we are being distracted by ~Varcht's 1-in-100 question, but the patently false statement they started with is being ignored. To bring this back to the subject of the thread, ~Varcht unintentionally -- I assume -- made themselves an excellent example of a victim of the modern problems of misinformation. I would wager that they don't regularly read the National Enquirer, and probably wouldn't believe most or a

You asserted, "you need most". That says you know what percentage of the people I am in contact with need to be vaccinated for some level of what you think I would consider to be "acceptable risk." So, do you know what that percentage would be, for various vaccines? And how did you define what my acceptable risk would be? Because I think you must have an opinion on both of those things, if you're willing to advise me that "I need most." Since you're favoring an economic slant to this discussion, how, exactly, did you decide what I need? > You make the ultimate escrow with your own body, since you risk infection as well. People can be carriers of diseases, and not become ill from them. This nullifies your argument. Also, that line of argument can be used as a defense of drunk driving. Drunk driving is not victim-less, even if your own body is risked, as well. That's insufficient escrow even for automobile insurance. > But now you mention again the application of force. Yes, I think people can enact a government. A government has an enforced monopoly on force, and hopefully has established a system of laws that give the people the opportunity to change those laws over time. And frankly, we voted. We use force against ourselves. We're okay with that. Feel free to vote that we shouldn't be okay with that. Also, feel free to move and renounce your citizenship. Those legal options are available to you. You can also attempt to resist the laws of your country, peacefully or otherwise