I find most forms of pseudoscience just annoying. They’re harmful, but ususally just to the practitioner. Someone who wastes their life chasing UFOs or becoming a Scientologist usually just hurts themself. That expands when an adult drags their children into their delusion, but usually someone outside their immediate circle is not directly affected. (I know there are exceptions. There are reasons a generalization is a generalization.)

Then there are the anti-vaccination conspiracy people. Vaccines are one of the true miracles of modern medicine. They have eradicated small pox, one of the deadliest diseases in human history, to the point where the only samples are in laboratories. Unfortunately, vaccines have become a victim of their own success. Since people are not growing up with seeing their friends and family members suffering from the ravages of vaccine-preventable diseases, the idea that the cure is worse than the disease has managed to take root. In this first post dealing with the anti-vaccine propaganda, I will deal with why I think everyone should be required to be vaccinated unless physically unable.

Vaccinations are one of those subjects where I devolve from some of the more rabid wookie-suited libertarians, especially when it comes to those of us who are urban or suburban residents. One of the truisms held among the libertarians is that “your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.” Essentially, the right a person has to do what they want ends when it will reasonably be expected to cause harm to another. How does that fit into the use of vaccines? For that we need a basic of understanding of how vaccines operate in a populace.

Let’s take a normal small sized city of maybe 50,000 people. In that population there are adults, children, elderly, healthy, and sick people. In that 50,000 there are going to be those that physically can’t be vaccinated. The very young or people with compromised immune systems. In order to protect those individuals from the ravages of some horrible diseases, the city will need to develop “herd immunity.” Essentially, this means that when (not if) a disease enters the city, there are enough vaccinated “blockers” between the carrier and the unprotected population that the disease dies before it can reach the unprotected. More importantly, for this herd immunity to work, there needs to be a high number of blockers. For some diseases the threshold may be 75% of the population needs to be vaccinated, but pertussis (whooping cough) requires at least 92% of the population to be vaccinated for herd immunity. Understanding that, if I choose to live in a city with this unprotected population and do not get vaccinated, then my actions can reasonably be expected to put a portion of the population at risk. How many people do I come in contact with during the course of a normal day? How would I know who could be vaccinated and didn’t and who’s immune system couldn’t take vaccinations.