VIEWPOINT: What happens if anti-vaxxers just face the consequences?

By Froma Harrop

Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

“Medical Freedom” crusaders are trying to end vaccination requirements for schoolchildren. Places where they succeed, epidemiologists warn, will, for starters, become overrun with measles, a disease that was virtually eliminated thanks to vaccines.

Measles used to kill up to 500 people a year, while polio left more than 15,000 paralyzed. Parts of America that stop requiring vaccinations will be turning their clocks back to an unhappy past. And as it happens, those parts tend to be right-wing Republican. 

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No major religion objects to vaccines, but anti-vax activists summon religious objections to them nonetheless. Or they jump on a useful anecdote here or there. 

One letter writer to The Wall Street Journal complained that months after getting a Covid booster, “I contracted Covid.” 

You don’t say. So did I. But neither of us ended up in a hospital or the morgue. The shots make the disease less deadly.

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