Oh Shou?

How about if I crumpled it up?

Stepped on it?

you would probably take it even though it was crumpled and stepped on it. Do you know why?

Because it is still $20, and its worth has not changed.

The same goes for you; if you have a bad day, or if something bad happens to you, you are not worthless.

Anecdotes aren’t evidence. The reason YOU specifically didn’t get sick is because of something called Mass Immunity.

That means that since everyone ELSE is vaccinated (you’re welcome), there’s nowhere for the virus to establish a hold. That mass immunity is the only thing that keeps people who CANNOT vaccinate—like the immunocompromised—from catching it.

The second that people stop vaccinating, that immunity disappears and the disease resurges, as is clear from the fact that the US is currently experiencing an epidemic of a disease that was projected to become extinct in our lifetimes.

Considering that there’s a whole host of people in my age range who weren’t vaccinated enough (even I was missing the second dose of MMR until recently) getting the measles and the mumps I think it’s ridiculous that we’re arguing over a life and death situation. Literally, do you want to live or die?

Also, even if you weren’t vaccinated and never got sick–at least not visibly–that doesn’t preclude the possibility that you picked up a virus and passed it on without knowing it. 

Maybe you had…oh, let’s say measles. But you had no symptoms. Or maybe you had a fever,  or sore eyes, or a harsh dry cough, but that was it. But nothing that said anything was seriously wrong. And in the meantime, you went about your business. Maybe you waited for a bus with an old man, or shared an aisle at the store with a pregnant woman and her wailing one-year-old, or attended a party with your friends.  

And the disease you didn’t know you had? That passed on to the people you met, or to people that they met. The disease you didn’t know you had was passed to a friend at that party, and she passed it to her mother and father, they passed it to their workmates, and now two offices are sick with your measles. The old man you saw at the bus stop? He got pneumonia as a result of the measles you passed to him. The pregnant woman from the store? She miscarried. Her baby, who was too young to be vaccinated? She developed encephalitis and died.