Reply #44: Vaccines should never be mandated

[laundry_queen]

unless you want a police state.
Many places here in Canada have far, far higher vaccine rates than in the States, but there is no mandate in most provinces. Why is that? Free health care, easy access, better education. You are barking up the wrong tree, concentrating your energy (and fear) in the wrong place.

As for vaccine effectiveness - 95% seems high to me - I just received a sheet that I'll have to dig up, from the local public health unit that says certain vaccines, such as Chicken Pox are more like 75%-80% effective. What pro-vaccine people should be doing is lobbying big pharma to produce far more highly effective vaccines. This way you wouldn't have to worry about those who don't vaccinate.

And figuring out the percentage of who catches a disease and who has been exposed is an inexact science at best. I'd like to know where that 90% comes from. Anecdotally - my kids don't have the MMR (will get it at puberty). They were exposed to the mumps, by playing with a kid who was fully vaccinated, sharing sippy cups, who came down with it the next day. My 2 unvaccinated kids who were exposed never got it. My kids were exposed directly to chicken pox numerous times before they caught it. One time, before the vax was widely available, I was babysitting 1 kid who was covered in pox and her brother who broke out on the last day I was watching them, again, all kids were little and playing with the same toys, putting them in their mouths etc. My kids, for some reason, didn't catch it. They were exposed that whole week.

What a lot of pro-vaccine people don't get is there are some anti-vax people who are on the side of science. I am one of them. I have read so many studies, (and yes I'm pretty good at deciphering them, went through some of them with my doctor and he was impressed) and there is still a large vacuum when it comes to hardcore double-blind studies with regards to vaccines. If the pro-vaccine people want to shut the anti-vaxxers up, there needs to be a huge study with kids who have NEVER had a vaccine, and kids who have been fully vaccinated on schedule, and everything in between. Follow them from birth. Make the science irrefutable. Importantly, make the funding completely independent of either group, anti or pro. When that study comes out, then I will be able to say with certainty, one way or the other, what I believe. Until then, the best I can do is risks vs benefits for my own kids. And until then, there will still be those who will be vulnerable to 'woo'.