Personally, I’m tolerant. I don’t mind what your sexuality is, nor your sexual preference, nor whether you believe in a bearded old Judaeo-Christian God or a multi-armed Hindu one, nor whether you wish to live with like-minded people in a hippie commune, nor whether you believe that nor even if you want to support an English Premier League football team.

“Society”, to be free, has to tolerate both the beliefs and some of the actions of others that people might not agree with or approve of. Absolutely. Most states and societies are far too controlling. True.

However, there are limits and vaccination is a REALLY bad example to pick to make the point. As I said, it’s fine for you to believe that you should poo in the street. It is NOT fine for you to do it. At least not unless it’s your own street in your own community and you won’t make a public health issue for everyone else. Similarly with vaccination. If you chose not to vaccinate, then you should have the moral integrity to stay the heck away from people who do vaccinate. If you mingle with the rest of the population then no-one can see the choice you have made, but its effects can include serious health implications for your neighbours. That’s not ok. That’s not a valid personal lifestyle choice.

As for comparing the science of vaccinations with “climate change futurology”, that’s a complete nonsense. The science of vaccinations, their benefits and their risks, is solid.

You may chose not to vaccinate against say – non infectious heart disease or something like that. That’s a lifestyle choice. To not vaccinate against something infectious is not a lifestyle choice you can make unless you also exclude yourself from society and live apart. You **can** chose to do that. Most people who don’t vaccinate don’t make that second, linked, and necessary choice.

To take your traffic analogy, it’s like believing that it’s fine to drive around town during the school run in a Range Rover while doing your morning email on your phone. I don’t care what you believe. However, it is valid for me and my kids and the law to care that you not do that.

If you wish to not vaccinate your kids or to drive around like that, then you may well be free to do so in a place where you won’t meet anyone else but not on a crowded street. If you refuse to vaccinate your kids then you should also not bring them to town.

Perhaps we can agree to differ on my specific illustration of the secondary point, that opting out of vaccination is the sort of harm (to others) that we should be prepared to countenance. Personally, I think the case is compelling, because nearly everyone who is harmed by non-vaccination are the non-vaccinated themselves, or their own children. Children are always vulnerable to their parents’ bad decisions, but the alternative is worse.

Even if we can comfortably differ on that secondary point, I would maintain my main point, about the intolerance of false beliefs. It strikes me that the proliferation of opposed opinions and different, “experimental” lifestyles is absolutely essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge and human happiness. These lifestyles will obviously involve decisions that we don’t approve of.

Unfortunately, a new sort of evangelism has taken the place of mainstream religion, an evangelism for anything that has the superficial appearance of being “scientific”. As often as not, this movement calls itself “scepticism”, although it is anything but. Its adherents seem to know little about the history or methods of science, and practically nothing about the way science involves bold – i.e. risky, doubtful – conjectures. Personally, I think vaccination is both safe and strongly advisable, but a genuine science always leaves room for doubt.

Vaccination is the product of genuine science, of course, but as often as not what the new evangelists treat as “certain” is no better than pseudo-science: I would argue that climate-change futurology is a good example.

The subject of the paper you cite is immediately suspicious: “eradicating measles from Ireland”. That is a completely hopeless cause, as it would require “sealing the borders” and other nonsense that no one would bother with for a disease that is usually non-lethal. “Keeping measles a minority disease that most people can avoid” is a much more realistic aim, and one that has largely been achieved already.

I don’t think I “leave out” the danger to non-vaccinated people, as I do take care to use words like ‘mostly’, ‘nearly’, etc. Diseases are always going to be a danger to wholly innocent people, like death on the roads. It’s always going to be a matter of balance how much effort and expense should be put into avoiding them. I think preventing poor people from driving their cheap little cars altogether would be a step too far in road safety. Similarly, I think interfering with parents’ judgement on what’s best for their children is a step too far, unless the judgement is obviously flawed and the consequences are seriously harmful. But neither of those applies here. There is always room for reasonable doubt where science is involved.

Similarly, I don’t really care if people believe that pooing in the street is healthy or unhealthy. I’d be rather worried if they actually did it.

Public health is one of the few places where “society” has meaning. If you consciously decide to take an entirely unnecessary, unpredictable and unrewarding risk with other people’s health then there may be an argument whether or not it should be possible to force you to stop, but not much of a one.

If you want to carry nasty diseases around in the street then I’m sorry, but that’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of action. I don’t believe that you’re entitled to do that.

There have been nasty outbreaks of measles (far more dangerous and lethal than people seem to remember) and mumps (rather nasty if caught by adult males) because people didn’t get their kids vaccinated.

That’s GBH, not religion.

As for effects, you have left out the danger to other unvaccinated children, such as those too young (under 12 months for measles, mumps and rubella) and those whose health precludes vaccination (immune disorders, leukaemia). Also, vaccinations do not guarantee 100% immunity. So a vaccinated child might still catch measles if the disease is circulating in the community.

There is still an argument against forcing immunisation or vaccination, but it must be recognised that it is not only the child whose parents choose not to vaccinate who is put at risk. It is also the baby next door, the sick kid down the street, the vaccinated cousin.

There are “reasons”; and there is “why”.

There is not “reasons why”; and it always gives me a bad feeling when I stumble over it in text.

It is even more disturbing in writing which purports to be dealing with sense and logic.