Vaccination exemption in CA, personal down, medical up

[The Valkyrie]

I would plan to vaccinate my kids, but I feel like if someone doesn't want to for whatever reason they shouldn't be forced into it .

So then let's say that the parents who don't vaccinate their kid, somehow manage to get their kid into the public school system. They are potentially putting other kids at risk because of their choices. My oldest has had numerous surgeries and because she has a heart condition, she's in a higher risk category for getting an infectious disease, especially from a child who's parents have chosen not to vaccinate. 

So let's also say that one of those anti-vaxer parents' kids comes down with meningitis and comes into contact with my child and my child gets sick and dies as a result. How fair is it that those parents shouldn't have to go to jail for essentially being reckless with their choices and causing the death of my child? They get to enjoy their child, who gets to live the rest of their life while mine is six feet under the ground. If that ever happens, I will absolutely push for life in prison and if they don't get convicted, I will be filing a wrongful death lawsuit against them. People like that are selfish and inconsiderate to those around them. 

The studies don't lie. Vaccinations help more than they hurt. And because of vaccinations, several diseases have already been eradicated or nearly eradicated. Take Polio, for example. 

Fact sheet from the WHO

Key facts

• Polio (poliomyelitis) mainly affects children under 5 years of age.
  
  
• 1 in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Among those paralysed, 5% to 10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.
  
  
• Polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350 000 cases then, to 37 reported cases in 2016. As a result of the global effort to eradicate the disease, more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis.
  
  
• As long as a single child remains infected, children in all countries are at risk of contracting polio. Failure to eradicate polio from these last remaining strongholds could result in as many as 200 000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world.
  
  
• In most countries, the global effort has expanded capacities to tackle other infectious diseases by building effective surveillance and immunization systems.
  

bold mine.

It's not so easy to say someone shouldn't be forced into vaxing their kids when the threat of death is a reality for thousands of kids like mine.  Any my child's life is just as important as any child belonging to an anti-vaxer.

Smallpox is estimated to have killed between 300 and 500 million people in the 20th century alone before it was eradicated.

That's up to half a billion in 80 years.  Six to ten times the number killed in WW2.

Half a billion.

One fourteenth of the current world's population.

But, according to the anti-vaxxers, the only thing they achieve is making money for pharmaceutical companies.

We're close to eradicating a number of other ailments as well, polio included.