[somethoughts]

Looking at this from a glass half full mindset, a decade from now we should have a pretty interesting data set from a public health policy perspective.

Prior to this, to get such a large subset of children to not take vaccines for an epidemiological study would probably be illegal or at best be considered highly unethical. Convincing parents to enroll their children in such a study in the name of science and for a small stipend would probably be next to impossible considering the potential lifetime impacts.

I posit that the challenge has been that in order to prove vaccine efficacy on a continuing/updated basis, you need access to a non-vaccinated control group that controls for developed world socio-economic conditions which didn't exist (until now). Thus there hasn't been an easy way to do large population scale studies on vaccine efficacy - so it did somewhat become a "trust us" tautology (until now).

[pavel_lishin]

I'd argue that the current situation is pretty damn unethical.

[Dig1t]

Please don’t flame me, this is an honest question.

Why is this unethical and for whom?

The vaccines work, so parents who choose to vaccinate their kids will be protected.

Parents who don’t trust the vaccine for whatever reason, they feel strongly that they might harm their child.

Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?

You’re basically asking parents to willfully harm (in their mind they think it’s harmful, I’m not saying it’s actually harmful) their own child, from their perspective why should they make that choice?

I just don’t see how this problem can be solved other than going back to square one and trying to educate people and convince them that vaccines are not harmful. The alternative is to force people to accept these injections even though people believe they are harmful, which just isn’t going to work well in the United States.

[triceratops]

Scientists have to answer to ethics boards. Politicians do not.

[aredox]

Ethics board have already discussed the topic at length, where you "argue" with a single sentence - but ok, let's admit vaccination obligations are unethical. Then you do admit infecting others is unethical as well? Now, science has advanced far enough we can retrace who I texted who through genetics; therefore, if you want to abandon compulsory vaccination, it must be compulsory that each and every infection must be investigated like a poisoning is and people who infect others be prosecuted as severely as polluters.

[aagha]

Isn't there too much intra-state travel to allow for us to have comparative sets in the future?

The problem with FL not vaccinating is that people who are sick will spread disease (and die) at different rates than those who are vaccinated.