# Should we make anti-vaccine parents pay more? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 23, 2011, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-anti-vaccine-parents-pay-more/568685 "2011-01-23T19:43:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-anti-vaccine-parents-pay-more/568685/121 "2015-02-09T07:59:39Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Indeed, the real way vaccines work is not simply by conferring immunity to each person who is given the dose. They aren’t 100% effective. No, the _real_ way vaccines work is by providing _fewer disease vectors_. To quote [SkepticalOB](http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/02/what-every-anti-vaccine-parent-gets-wrong-about-vaccines.html): > > By vaccinating almost everyone, you ensure that those for whom the vaccine doesn’t take, and those who _cannot_ become vaccinated (the very young, the very old, the immunocompromised) are also protected. This is why vaccines are so effective in ending the spread of endemic diseases - not because they’re 100% effective, but because they’re effective enough that when everyone gets them, [the disease lacks enough vectors to spread](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsTR6DYzPvI&feature=em-subscription-upload). This is why even a 28%-effective flu vaccine is far more useful than the numbers would let on. The analogy that I always like to use is to compare the infectious disease to a nuclear cascade. If, on average, each infected individual infects more than one person before they recover, then one case becomes two, which becomes four, which allows the epidemic to grow out of control, the same way a supercritical mass of uranium allows a single atomic fission to cascade out of control until the whole thing melts or explodes. The purpose of vaccination isn’t to reduce the transmission rate to zero, it is merely to reduce the transmission rate below 1, the same way that impurities in a mass of uranium can reduce a supercritical mass to a subcritical mass. Do that, and instead of an out of control cascade, the chain reaction will quickly die out on its own. But since viruses cannot be spontaneously generated like free neutrons can in a radioactive material, once the chain reaction dies out, it _stays_ dead. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-anti-vaccine-parents-pay-more/568685/122 "2015-02-09T20:01:58Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > And… > > Exactly how many countries make it illegal to not vaccinate your children? This is not some strange American thing. Not to mention that it would almost certainly be unconstitutional to mandate vaccinations at the federal level. States might be able to do it, but not the feds. I’m not sure about international and federal law, but we don’t allow child abuse, we don’t allow parents to starve their children. Hell, we don’t even allow them to give them hot sauce as a punishment method. So there is no way in hell we should allow parents to “choose” not to vaccinate their children. It wouldn’t be particularly difficult to enforce. Since almost all children enroll in public or private school, we can just require proof of vaccination at that point. Anyone who wants to home school will have to provide proof to local government that their children have been vaccinated. Any parent that gets caught not vaccinating a child is prosecuted, and the child taken away. We won’t be able to catch all of them, but we don’t have to. Just most. That’ll prevent the spread of disease. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-make-anti-vaccine-parents-pay-more/568685.md?page=6)