> All 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) mandate diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, rubella and chickenpox. In addition, every state except Iowa mandates immunization against mumps.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/08/states-have...
FWIW I believe Florida is in the process of relaxing mandates for some of the other required vaccinations -- certainly there is now political hay to be made from doing so because the concept has been so poisoned by the Covid vaccine mandaters.
That doesn't seem all that narrow; 90% of the population goes through the public school system. (Side note: I'm in NY, and our vaccination mandate covers private/religious schools, too.)
> well-tested and -understood vaccines
Like the COVID vaccines, sweet.
> illnesses far more threatening to them than Covid
Missed the chickenpox one, did you? Killed ~100/year before the vaccines. COVID's killed 805 children in the US so far, per https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics.
> Like the COVID vaccines, sweet
More gaslighting. The publications from the manufacturers themselves are chock full of unanswered questions and risks they say we must wait years for the answer to.
In what way are the COVID vaccines not well-tested or not well understood? I understand many laypeople want to declare an arbitrary length of time that they can pretend means a new drug is safe. But the professionals who have informed opinions on the matter are essentially in unanimous agreement that these vaccines have been proven safe.
They have tried making MRNA shots for a long time with consistently negative results. Maybe they got it right this time, but still there is reason to be skeptical, as a "lay" person you have to trust the system that this shot was produced properly, tested properly, stored properly, and administered properly. Even if on a large scale there are low risks, something can go wrong on any one of those steps.
We also have never had a shot like this brought to market in such a short period of time. There is barely a year of data in the public, and that data is heavily politicized. It's nearly impossible to ask an honest question as someone who may be worried for fear of being labeled a lunatic or a "walking bio-weapon" as someone said before in this very thread.
And then we see how much money a company like pfizer has made off of this, and their track-record in the past as well as the track record of many other pharmaceutical companies, and you have a recipe for people to be worried. Remember, public health looks at outcomes on a population level. If they push something and they think it will have a net benefit overall, they are not thinking about you and your own risk profile. You have to do that and unfortunately we're increasingly telling people that doesn't matter, that you must do what is right for the group and by-the-way, you can't possibly know what's right for you anyway.
Like most people, I have done this for dozens of drugs developed during my lifetime. Until it became politically charged I never saw much pushback. How many years had Cialis or Claritin or Wellbutrin been in use before people starting taking them without a second thought? And those drugs likely had much smaller trials.
This is a common argument, and honestly it's garbage.
Vaccines are never tested "for decades" either, because people kind of assume that it is highly unlikely that there are super-long-term side effects from small acute doses. I would tend to agree.
The argument is therefore not garbage at all.
Obviously during the first years they were in use these vaccines had not been "distributed for decades". That's the era we're in with COVID.