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curl-6 on 14 February 2015
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padib said:
curl-6 said:
Also, Measles killed 145,700 people in 2013 alone, or about 400 per day.

That is, however, a 75% decrease from 2000... thanks to, you guessed it, vaccination.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/

Your best argument is the numbers argument.

However if the children of parents who choose to vaccinate are vaccinated, then they should be protected from those who's parents chose not to vaccinate.

Some people cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, such as those with severely compromised immune systems or certain pre-existing medical conditions. These people rely on everyone around them being vaccinated to keep them safe. Also, like any medicine, vaccines do not succeed 100% of the time; generally, over 90% of people vaccinated gain lasting immunity, but a small minority don't, and they also need to be protected by the people around them.

There's a concept called herd immunity; basically, if you immunise a large enough portion of a population, a disease can't spread within it. Once you drop below that number, however, the disease begins to spread again. With Diptheria, for example, 85% of people must be immune for it to be held in check. With Whooping Cough, the number is 92-94%.

Measles has made comebacks in many industrialized nations because after the MMR hoax, a lot of people didn't vaccinate their kids, the percentage of the population with immunity fell, and the disease became endemic again.