No, I hadn’t misunderstood, but thank you for the clarification anyway. The anti-infant vaccination idea understands that, and further thinks that the baby’s immune system is busy enough learning to fight off whatever pathogens it encounters in the baby’s environment naturally, through being handled, being sneezed on, sucking on things that have been dropped on the floor, etc. Adding additional stress to the immune system is worrisome, when one thinks about other (perhaps not comprable, I don’t know) multi-immune challenges, like getting a secondary bacterial infection while you have a cold. The thought is that the immune system has only finite capabilities, and if you “overwhelm” the system with lots of vaccines AND natural exposure all at once, maybe things go wrong. Maybe the system can’t handle it and the kid gets a full blown case of whatever thing we’re trying to prevent and dies from it - when she might have survived it had she gotten it later on her own or later from a shot, or, statistically, not gotten it at all. Maybe she gets a high fever and seizes as a result, and wouldn’t have if not vaccinated. Maybe something else happens to an overwhelmed system, and the kid is never the same again. Finally, there’s a great skepticism that vaccines are actually effective - everyone has a story of an unvaccinated kid who never got more than a cold and a vaccinated classroom who got put out of commission from measles despite their vaccines. People are under the impression that the rates of complications from, say, measles, are less than the rates of complications from the vaccine - that the chance of your kid dying of measles is less than the chance of your kid being irreparably damaged by the vaccine. Modern sanitation and the disease cycle of the vaccine-preventable diseases is thought to have more with reduced vaccine-preventable disease than the mandatory vaccination programs.
Again, I’m not saying I, or anyone else, has any evidence of this. I want to be clear that I’m not trying to present a GQ-worthy defense of the anti-infant vaccination point of view. I can’t, and I don’t think anyone else can, either (or if they can, I haven’t heard it yet.) All I’m trying to do is explain the thinking to you folks (most of whom, board history has shown, aren’t on that “side” of things) so that you can understand the fears parents spread to each other that keep them from vaccinating.
No, I don’t know who the organized groups are these days. But this is what’s discussed around the hummus whenever I have a party, by lots of very intelligent people, some of whom have M.D. or R.N. listed after their name. Sure, they’re fringy M.D.s and R.N.s, but this anti-vaccination stance is not limited to the ultra-religious or ultra-granola crunchy folks. That doesn’t mean that it’s any more valid, but I do think we need to actually address the concerns that parents have, and not simply shout at them that they’re stupid whackos, IF our intent is to actually figure out what’s best for the babies individually as well as the population as a whole. I can’t think of another subject where people are intentionally misled into willingly sacrificing their children, by a single action, for the greater good. Of course that’s hard to convince people to do! Parents get rather attached to their sprog. 