This feels extraordinarily condescending because most people actually start out as pro-vaccine. It's simply accepted that they are a net boon to society. If you want to be universally reviled or derided, become anti-vax. Not a maxx-vaxxer.

So yes, let's stop playing "edgelord."

A big problem is that there is a lot of game-theoretical stuff going on here. The population-level risk of dying from many vaccines is actually on par or greater than your risk of dying of the disease at transmission rates for the past 50 or so years, if you live in a western country. So naturally, if transmission is exceedingly low, even when there are notable outbreaks, many people will still gravitate to the anti-vax position because of their cost/benefit calculation.

The idea that death or encephalopathy from vaccines is really low and lower than the risk of getting the disease is true for many diseases besides flu. But the problem is that when the transmission of those diseases becomes so low, the vaccine risk becomes greater. This is the entire reason that the US switched from the whole cell pertussis vaccine to the conjugate. The vaccine used now doesn't stimulate immunity as robustly, but it's also less dangerous. It's also the reason the US stopped using live poliovirus vaccine. This isn't a conspiracy theory -- you can look it up in any microbiology textbook.

That said, there's ample reason to believe the efficacy of many preventative vaccines is oversold, and the links provided in your prior post by myself and other various readers are indicative of it.

The efficacy also isn't static over time. The MMR and pertussis vaccines are both much less effective than they were decades ago.

Measles outbreaks would need to be huge to achieve the death rate that the measles vaccine achieves on a yearly basis. Last time I checked, on average, the measles vaccine kills 10 people per year. When is the last time someone died of measles in the US? That's why freaking out about measles feels like hysteria to many of us because this has been a clearly moving target over the decades to use very isolated cases to create fear.

People are going to make different decisions based on different data and their own risk-benefit analyses. That's what living in a free society looks like. If we get a bunch of outbreaks and people start dying of various infectious diseases that were previously gone, then people may go back to vaccinating (maybe).

People generally learn through the school of hard knocks. They are not intuitive types who learn through data analysis and complex persuasive arguments.

https://themariachiyears.substack.com/p/quick-and-dirty-hypothesis-testing