Dr. Perry Kendall, BC's top health official, has come out on the side of education versus mandatory vaccinations saying that there are too many exceptions for medical or religious reasons to make herd protection effective.
An exemption for medical reasons is the only exemption that is valid. Otherwise it should be mandatory vaccinations for all children in public or religious schools.
I would also go so far as to agree with American doctors who are now refusing to see patients who are unvaccinated due to the danger those uninformed, selfish people, pose to young children and those with genuine medical conditions which don`t allow them to be vaccinated.
I'm not sure how effective education alone is as it preaches to the converted and will never reach the tone deaf world – of not just the more conservative churchy types who war against science - but also those individuals and groups who have abandoned rational thinking and signed themselves up to all the crazy conspiracy theories out there.
In some ways, the conspiracy theories, based on paranoid and delusional thinking by otherwise normal people, are themselves a pandemic of the internet age and social media for which there is unfortunately no vaccine.
Sure, by all means educate people on the safety and necessity of vaccines. But when that fails to influence the large percentage of the population living in the fantasy world of their choosing then we must demand that the government do its job and bring in mandatory vaccinations across the board.
Robert T. Rock