Isn't the anti-vaxxer craziness self defeating by definition? Eventually these people would die out leaving the reasonable ones to live in peace. Am I missing some obvious reason why we can't simply allow stupidity run its course?
Yes, this is a comically simplistic view, and shouldn't be taken seriously. I'm just pointing out that the pseudo-Darwinian "let them die" rhetoric actually means "let us die".
1. Vaccines aren't 100% effective. Unvaccinated people are a threat to vaccinated people.
2. Vaccines aren't an option for 100% of people. People who choose not to vaccinated people are a threat to people who can't be safely vaccinated.
3. Information, including misinformation, spreads more quickly than death does. It won't die out due to natural selection.
4. Losing half our population to infectious disease, even if you consider them stupid and irresponsible, would have catastrophic effects for the economy.
5. A majority of the effected population are children.
6. Maybe, just maybe, letting millions of people just die of preventable disease, even if they're adults and made a foolish decision, isn't the right thing to do.
B) more seriously, antivax is a symptom; the real disease is memetic. At some point people gave up on fact-finding processes and the value of expertise. That is a disease vector where social media is the cholera-ridden communal water pump. Some of the things it spreads are harmless (moon landing denial) and some are even more dangerous than anti-vax, such as holocaust denial and sandy hook "paid actor" lies.
What's new is the internet.
Of course, irrationality is new! /s Uhm, what about religions?
There have always existed morons. The internet has just shown light on what was once restricted to rumor mills.
(Of course, that's assuming the survey and reporting are reliable ...)
edit:
Just going to point this out: this comment thread has multiple instances of people on the anti-vax slant showing that they either don't understand what herd immunity is, or don't understand that vaccinations are not 100% and are only effective on large populations due to herd immunity.
Again, I argue that education would make the anti-vax problem go away.
And then the result of that would be a ton of new anti-vaxxers, which would be bad for everyone.
Don't strawman that which you do not understand.
There is no indication that this lunacy is in any way shape and form is genetic.
Also the irony is that the vast majority of anti-vaxxers are vaccinated they will sadly survive their children might not but due to the sanitary conditions and herd immunity of western countries we will need a much larger portion of the population to be unvaccinated before we see major negative effects.
This is why we often see outbreaks in various spots that host large immigrant populations which are more likely to have lower percentage of vaccinated adults and even host asymptomatic carriers.
They will plague, they will survive.
They would be, if all anti-vaxxers were leftists, or if the anti-vax movement were politically and ideologically motivated by leftist politics the way that climate change denial is by the right, but no.
Sometimes equivocation works, but in this case it doesn't.
The right wing anti-vaxxers love to make analogy in between vaccine and guns, claiming it is their freedom to keep or resist and a unique denial of science and statistics, which I would say it mainly a right-wing hallmark.
http://vactruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/number-vaccin... (I did not read any info from this website, just foud the image by ggl image search)
The US has higher than expected childhood and especially infant mortality because it deliberately doesn't provide decent healthcare to a substantial fraction of its population. If anything the US has lower than desirable rates of vaccination, which is why it keeps having problems with outbreaks of preventable diseases.