[tenar]

Vaccines are not totally safe.

They are, however, a whole lot safer than the diseases they are used to protect against.

It's like seatbelts. Seatbelts are not totally safe. You can be injured by a seatbelt. You can be injured by an airbag, too. But we all understand that these things actually make cars safer because there is much much more chance of being injured because you weren't wearing a seatbelt than of being injured because you were wearing one. Ditto with airbags. So we all, I'm sure, belt in our children and would buy cars with airbags if we could. Because it makes us safer. Even though there is a risk associated with using those safety devices.

Now, someone might argue that they will never crash their car. But we all understand that even if one person is a perfect driver, not everyone is. So you can't be totally protected from car accidents unless you never use a road at all, not even to cross it walking. It's like that with diseases. We would all like to think that our children won't be exposed to diseases, but the fact is that we can't protect them from exposure entirely. It's impossible. All we can do is to reduce the risk for them if they are exposed. Like we reduce the risk for them if they are in a car accident. So we vaccinate. Or we use seatbelts. Same idea entirely.

Now, the odd thing is, as far as I'm concerned, is that it is illegal not to use seatbelts in cars. But it is not illegal not to vaccinate your kids (or yourself). There is community consensus that matches the research. But there is obviously not community consensus about vaccinations, even though the research supporting them is just as strong as that supporting seatbelts. (Actually it's probably stronger - vaccination is getting an awful lot of research these days, and scientifically there is as much consensus as you ever get from scientists about anything at all). My guess is that this is because car accidents are somehow more concrete, so the risks about those are easier for people in general to understand. So the laws about seatbelts got passed a generation ago, and everyone understands why we use them, and everyone agrees on the need for them, to reduce the risks.