You're Still An Asshole, Lady

[Heywood]

Darkstar, I think you are being overly generous in your "benefit of the doubt."

But you are quite right to emphasize the herd immunity aspect of this, as selfish assholes view this as an individual rights sort of thing, when what they do is something that very significantly affects others.  If you don't want to vaccinate, you need to fucking move to an island and never interact with others.  If you are a part of society, you need to not be endangering others.  Other people absolutely have a right to object to you endangering them.

Unfortunately, quite a few people with shit for brains have children, and make decisions that one would expect of people with shit for brains.  Vaccinations need to be required for everyone who does not have a legitimate medical exemption.

Again, I haven't made up my mind on this issue.  But here is something I have thought about that you may not have considered.  A vaccination is a body modification.  It modifies a human being's immune system.  Does the state have the right to require anyone to modify their bodies?  Could the state for instance, randomly select 10 percent of all males and force-ably sterilize them in order to control population?  Some would say no, that a person's body is sacrosanct and no one else has any business over it.  If a terrorist release small pox virus, would you want to force everyone to get the vaccine or would you accept the "my body my choice" argument?