If someone is stupid enough to seriously believe that vaccinations lead to autism, I don't want their children surviving to reproduce. It's best that deleterious genes die out as quickly as possible.

No, because a free country means you don't have to be stuck with needles if you don't want to.

If someone is stupid enough to seriously believe that vaccinations lead to autism, I don't want their children surviving to reproduce. It's best that deleterious genes die out as quickly as possible.

I would agree with this except those unvaccinated toolsacks then become vectors and breeding grounds for disease and serve as petri-dishes for them to mutate in.

This. Unvaccinated children pose a health risk to everyone.

Life is fatal.

Perhaps, but I'd prefer to not have a bout of smallpox because some ignorant bint listened to Jenny McCarthy and her unvaxxed crumb catcher allowed it to fester and mutate just enough that my vax against it is no longer useful.

Perhaps, but I'd prefer to not have a bout of smallpox because some ignorant bint listened to Jenny McCarthy and her unvaxxed crumb catcher allowed it to fester and mutate just enough that my vax against it is no longer useful.

I shouldn't have to say this, but it's common knowledge that smallpox has been eradicated since the 70s.

I shouldn't have to say this, but it's common knowledge that smallpox has been eradicated since the 70s.

My reply remains, if you don't want to worry about it then get vaccinated yourself.

And what is that going to accomplish against new strains that have been allowed to mutate by ignorant people that don't vaccinate?

Viruses mutate as they replicate, but fortunately, by definition, viruses require the machinery of living organisms to do so. To do this, viruses must enter the cells and hijack their function to produce more viruses. If the body is prepared to identify the pathogen, it can respond immediately to the pathogen in a matter of hours instead of days. Given that viruses can replicate at phenomenal rates, the faster the body responds, the less replication will happen, the less likely a beneficial (to the virus) mutation will occur. Furthermore, even if a mutation does happen, if individuals around the infected patient are all immunized, the mutation will not be carried on. The nice thing about adaptive (post-exposure) immunity is that it identifies a bunch of different parts of the pathogen as foreign, so even if little bits of it change, one antibody might be useless but all of the others will still work!