If your child is vaccinated, they aren't really at significant risk of catching a preventable infection from an unvaccinated child, since that's the sort of thing vaccines are designed to prevent. This isn't to say that anti-vax is a rational position, but I don't think (disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional) it puts vaccinated children at additional risk.
Vaccines by themselves are not 100% effective (see the Measles outbreak from earlier this year [1]). The additional benefit of Herd Immunity[2] helps to increase the effectiveness, which is at risk of being lost the more the anti-vax movement gains traction.
> This isn't to say that anti-vax is a rational position, but I don't think (disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional) it puts vaccinated children at additional risk.
1) Vaccinations aren't 100% effective.
2) All unvaccinated kids aren't unvaccinated because of anti-vax parents. Some can't receive them for medical reasons, others are exposed to the disease before they could receive the vaccines.
3) The effectiveness of vaccines decreases over time, this is why adults with or around children are being encouraged to get boosters for things they were vaccinated for 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.
4) Sometimes vaccines don't take.
5) Sometimes immune systems are compromised (ever gotten sick and then, right when you were getting better, a cold takes you out for a week or more?). This can happen to both adults and children.
Ultimately, we need to achieve a high rate of vaccinations in order to minimize/eliminate the disease. The anti-vax movement is doing all it can to destroy our herd immunity and bring back diseases that we should've been on the verge of destroying (at least within certain regions of the world). The more the disease is around you, even if you're vaccinated, the higher the chance that you'll contract it or become a carrier of it. In the end, we're all less healthy as individuals and a species because of these morons.
