> How long did humanity survive without vaccines for _everything_? Oh that's right.

Is this a trick question? Humanity survived by having enough people with enough other useful traits (like thinking, including the ability to reason about disease and how to prevent it) to overcome the numbers lost to disease. Humans died to disease in enormous numbers.

> nor that they're all good for _me_ as an individual.

Herd immunity presents a real challenge to idea that people should generally be allowed to make their own choices. One's choice here affects everyone else, in a minuscule way that nonetheless adds up to many thousands of lives saved. I'm not sure what the answer is for this, but generally I come down on the side of: if a democratic process creates rules requiring us all to be immunized for the common good, that's okay with me.

How long did INDIVIDUAL humans survive without vaccines and modern medicine? It was very uneven - crazy high infant mortality, suffering for many through multiple preventable diseases, etc.

My mom had measles as a kid in the 40s and as a result, had frequent ear infections for a few years afterwards. That's a bunch of real pain and suffering that could have been prevented. It wouldn't have affected the "will humans survive" question at all - she's still alive in her 80s. But her life could have had less misery and pain. I have a friend who has a twisted leg and a limp because polio vaccines were not available in Czechoslovakia when he was a kid in the 70s.

In the end, the general outcome of vaccines is to raise the quality of life of ALMOST the entire group significantly. And yes, the odd one has a bad reaction - but even then, it's most likely LESS than if they actually got the real disease.

Humanity survived - but a lot of individual died that wouldn't today. As a parent I don't want to see most of my children die before they reach 5. I've been to more funerals of children in my life than I want to. The vast majority of the children I've ever met will see their 65th birthday: because of vaccines and modern drugs.

My wife would also hate having to give birth a dozen times just to get enough children (that much unprotected sex is fine with me). I don't want my wife to die in childbirth which was fairly common before modern drugs as well.

There IS scrutiny on vaccines, by the scientific and medical community - your "scrutiny" (as presumably neither a PhD in a relevant field or MD) is not valuable or relevant. There is decades of research that says that currently recommended vaccines are safe and effective.

Are you also living in a cave and hunting your food, since humanity survived on that for millennia?

How many years faster would we have gotten through the black death if some people had been vaccinated against it? Was losing over 30% of Europe's population better than... not doing that?

>How long did humanity survive without vaccines for _everything_? Oh that's right.

for most of human history, half of kids died before reaching adulthood.

Vaccines and antibiotics are central to child life expectancy increase. But yes - if patients are concerned about certain vaccines they should be allowed to take them on a delayed schedule

How many millions died or were crippled by diseases which are now preventable?

Smallpox, polio, measles, etc

Sure, 50% to 70% of people who got smallpox survived, which also means that without vaccines you are condemning 30% to 50% of the population to die.

Same with the millions of people, specially in poorer countries, who died or were paralyzed by polio.

Vaccines have make those horrors a thing of the past, yet people today are concerned about "hat doesn't mean I think it's a good idea to take _all_ of them without scrutiny, nor that they're all good for _me_ as an individual."

Time has diminished the horrors of something that was fairly common a 100 years ago.

They have been scrutinized by many tests by multiple governments over decades. The do your own research crowd needs to take their own medicine on vaccines.

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