Budgies in the Mines

Anti-vaxxers, what to make of them?

The ones that I have met fall into a number of categories:

1. Conspiracy theorists without kids of a vaccination age. These guys are just using the issue to vent their general disliking of the current first world systems that they find themselves in.

2. Concerned parents that suspect that their kids are being meddled with by governments. This lot generally don’t have the capacity to assess the information on the subject and hence sensibly land in the ‘do nothing’ category.

3. Then there’s the missionaries, the generally poorly educated campaigners that know that vaccination is a prelude to some Matrix-like future where we all end up chipped and totally controlled. In the meantime, have you seen the side effects?

What makes the issue very interesting is that the battleground is played out by proxy in the future health of (currently innocent) children, and not that of the people choosing not to vaccinate.

So morally, the question is whether parents even have the right to make such a decision as to not vaccinate.

Generally speaking, our rights to even make decisions regarding our own well-being are being slowly removed, one by one.

Many people are very much struggling with the modern view that parents don’t have moral rights over their own children. Where does it end? Do parents even have the right to force religious beliefs on their children?

And the fact that anti-vaxxers might be threatening the health of other children just enrages the debate even further.

It’s a very emotional issue pitting the government purse and the Nanny State against the barely educated, the scared and the suspicious.

And to make it worse, the medical industry won’t stop at life threatening diseases. Sniffing large profits they’ll argue for vaccination for what could only be called nuisance diseases.

I suspect that somewhere hidden in there is a sort of Pareto Rule. Let me explain.

The first generation to be freed from life destroying diseases such as polio probably just breathed a collective sigh of relief; no opposition.

But as the generations proceeded and the memories of death and permanent illnesses receded, and as the diseases being targeted diminished in their impact on mortality and morbidity, the tide turned and there was less support.

I suspect that this opposition to vaccination is very amenable itself to epidemiological study and modeling.

Once achieved, governments would know exactly what they can achieve with such programs and what levers they have in order to garner wide spread support for new vaccination programs, if achievable.

They should use the same diligence that they inexplicably expect from the general population on the issue, rather than the ‘trust us’ approach.

I’d argue against just shoving vaccination down people’s throats; it’s clearly starting to be counter productive.

And not just counter-productive in the context of vaccination.

The issue itself is a proxy for the general distrust of first world governments in their modern form of serving many undeclared masters.

The risk is that the good becomes a victim of the greed that we all know exists.