Out the airlock

Thanks to the Bad Astronomer for this interesting link, and note that I outlast him (though it is probably only because I am a young whipper snapper lol).

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Not Vaccinating IS Child Abuse

Not vaccinating, for anything other than medical reasons, is among the worst kind of child abuse, and not just of your own children.

There is a significant proportion of the population that cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons and these people require the benefits of herd immunity to protect them from the harms the rest of us are protected from by being vaccinated.

Now for those that don't know, herd immunity is when enough people (>95%) are vaccinated and there is no ability for the disease to have a reservoir in the population and hence infect people. If too many people do not vaccinate then diseases that can be avoided can become rampant in the community, e.g. the measles outbreaks in the UK in the last few years.

Edit: Oh and in case you missed it the point of this was to direct you to Mark Crislip's wonderful post at sciencebasedmedicine about exactly what we are vaccinating against.

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