Actually, that is not true. In fact a prominent antivax pediatrician in California advised his patients to keep quiet so that they could benefit from their neighbors being vaccinated. At about 95% vaccination rate, the population is pretty well protected. Doesn’t really matter why the 5% is unvaccinated.
I am from Serbia and I assure you this is almost entirely due to anti-vaxxer activity there. Poverty has almost nothing to do with it. Most people that decided consciously to avoid against vaccination are the ones that would be considered middle class. The drop happened not during the 90ies i.e. the low point of economy but rather now when economy is doing completely OK.
Also the biggest drop in vaccination rate in Serbia is in Belgrade and Niš (my hometown and number 3 City in country) The biggest problem is that even a sizable chunk of medical professionals succumbed to anti-vaxxer agenda. Than again Serbia is the world capital of conspiracy theorists.
That should be crime against humanity.
It is also quite convenient for them - suffering and misery caused by preventable diseases may make radical positions even more popular.
Even if this is the case, these are not reasons to go mild on people that voluntarily forgo their vaccinations. Quite the opposite actually it makes it even more important that everyone that can get their vaccination does get it.
I’ve seen that number many times and am curious how it was derived. I would have expect a percentage threshold based on population density, not a fixed 95%. AKA X minimum unvaccinated people per square mile, or people encountered per day, or something.
Mostly calculated based on the expected attack rate. As measles is one of the most contagious diseases with regard to humans, with about 90% attack rate, it requires a higher rate of vaccination than some others. 95% is about as good as you can get in a large population. I am a country doc, I fully expect there is an epidemiologist on here who could go into the details of that calculation, but that is the high altitude overview.
And here I had to educate a nurse that premie babies under a certain weight got an extra hep b at 12 months old.
I came down with the chicken pox when I was 22 in the 80s. It was the worst illness I had ever had. If these parents knew how bad it felt to get really sick with something would they change their minds about vaccinating?
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