If anti vaxxers think they are doing no harm, they need to educate themselves about history.

[shraby]

I maintain a county genealogy website which includes adding information about people buried in the cemeteries, obits, etc.
If they knew how many children's deaths I've put on who died from those "harmless" diseases that a vaccination can stop they would be astonished.
I've put as many as 5 members of a family who died in a 2 week span from "harmless disease." One family was coming home from a funeral for one of the children and another had died while they were gone.
I cannot understand how the parents themselves survived mentally, to have 5 children around the dinner table one week and the next have none.
It happened once because of lack of medicine, and it looks like it has a good chance of happening again because of ignorance.

[brush]

1. Horrible!

I'm not giving the anti-vaxxers credit by calling it "ignorance".

They are willfully ignoring proven medical knowledge — and it's costing us.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. In my family it was whooping cough...

that got a few a generation or so ago.

There should be no excuse for not using modern medicine.

[COLGATE4]

3. It's not happening so much because of ignorance

but from an arrogance that leads otherwise normal and usually educated parents to eagerly attach themselves to whatever kooky health fad comes along. They eagerly join in, crowing to their friends and family that they are shining examples of parengts who "always do what's best for their child" and that "their research" has led them to believe that vaccines cause autism (or the popular cause de jour).

[Bluenorthwest]

6. That's one element of it, but religious dogma is another large element in the US and Canada and in

Europe as well. Look up 'Dutch Bible Belt Measles' or for that matter 'polio'.

[Mz Pip]

4. My grandmother lost 4 children

That was 40% of her family. This was 100 years ago so I'm pretty sure they lived natural lives and ate only organic food. According to some in the anti vaxer crowd that should have been more than enough to keep their immune systems strong.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. These people should take a walk through old cemeteries and see how many graves there are

for young children who died from these "harmless" diseases. It really is a sobering experience. As you say, there might be several children from one family who died within days of each other.

[shraby]

7. Problem with walking thru the old cemeteries, many children's graves never got a marker.

We are having a really hard time locating the burials of the children. Little by little we are finding them, but it's a hard slog. The parents often buried a child or two then moved on.