Prior to the measles vaccine, about 3-4 million people got measles every year. In such a world, a 0.1% mortality rate still leaves 3000-4000 people dead from an easily preventable disease. And this says nothing of the people who suffer from it but don't die. The economic costs from kids and parents getting sick and missing school and work would total in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even intelligent people can be narrow-minded. There is much more to a disease than its mortality rate.
People do not have "natural immunity" to measles. They develop an immunity after contact with live measles in the form of disease or dead measles in the form of a vaccine.
The difference between the two is not just the greater risk of death from measles the disease, but also the risk of blindness.
It's bad enough that he's not taking that risk himself, but foisting it on his children. And, worse, on the rest of society.
Yes, we both know that. What he means by "natural immunity" is the immunity that you get by actually contracting the measles and surviving.
It's not nonsensical at all. His friend is arguing that if we accept losses to disease then the following humans will be the more resilient ones.
however, I thought I would mention a rather fatal flaw in this argument:
There is no guarantee that humans that can survive diseases like the measles will be "stronger" than humans who can not.
For example, Sickle cell anemia, a genetic disease, is an ADAPTION to survive malaria. It's an intentional sacrifice.
Bacteria that adapt to anti-biotics arn't necessarily stronger than bacteria who did not adapt. Adapted bacteria make sacrifices to survive a hostile agent, they don't get it for free.
So attempting to immunize humans by breeding them to be resistant/immune has no guarantee to make humans stronger. It's possible the change required could be entirely benign, or it could be catastrophic.
You: "How does natural immunity work?"
They: "You get really miserable and sick and...something something antibodies and maybe t-cells"
You: "Oh, I see...and vaccines work differently?"
They: "Well, vaccines are made of, uh, weakened or dead virus cells that induce the creation of, hmmm, antibodies...and maybe t-cells."
You: "Those sound really similar"
They: "Yes, but natural immunity is *stronger* and *more complete*."
You: "It is?"
> Not all anti-vaxers are stupid or ignorantWe're already noting that the acellular pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine doesn't do as good a job as the old "witch's brew" variety. Wikipedia right now says:
Acellular pertussis vaccine (aP) with three or more antigens prevents around 85% of typical whooping cough cases in children. It has higher or similar efficacy to the previously-used whole cell pertussis vaccine, however the efficacy of the acellular vaccine declines faster.
That said, this posture is still an example of amoral familism, and should be dealt with as such, e.g. exile.
'different' being 'higher', sure.
He doesn't understand statistics. Take measles: If you happen to contract measles, you have about 0.001% chance of getting measles encephalitis which can kill you in a day or so. Extreme situation for sure, but the game then becomes reducing the total number of people roaming around with any form of measles. When you look a graph of the number of measles cases over time, you can easily see when the measles vaccine was introduced (just by eyeballing it). The vaccine unequivocally works effectively.
Severe risks associated with the vaccine? About 0.000001%, which is low enough that it is probably not the fault of the vaccine.
Result: statistics decimates arguments against the measles vaccine. The only reason he can even make a quantum of a argument is because the population at large has gotten the vaccine and so his selfishness is not as noticeable.
I assure you he does understand the statistics. He just doesn't think that have one in a thousand children die of encephalitis is too high a price to pay for the "benefits of naturally acquired immunity".
No, that's not true. There actually is some evidence that naturally acquired immunity is stronger and lasts longer than vaccine-acquired immunity. It is also arguable (and he does argue) that interfering too much with natural selection can have unforeseen but wide-ranging negative consequences in the future.