I thought all anti-vaxxers were idiots. Then I married one

Vaccinations are generally a public health benefit, no doubt about it, but there's also much we don't understand about how the immune system works. It's not completely, entirely, 100% irrational to desire to avoid messing with something you don't fully understand. The more science you learn, sometimes, the more you learn how little we really know and understand about the complexities of our own bodies. With enough science, that can turn around and reinforce rationality; but I don't think we're there yet as a society in either the body of science available, nor the prevalence of good science education in the population.

I used to be in the same camp as the author. My mom is what I'd call a rational anti-vaxxer, and I hated her for it. She's a trained biologist. She vaccinated where she could see all the science and the benefit, but treated each vaccine as an independent entity, requiring new proof and new science and understanding of how it functioned and how effective it was and the cost/benefit to society before making the decision. When I turned 18, she turned the reins over to me and told me to make my own decisions based on all the data available. She trusted me with the science.

I took this to heart as an adult. I feel it is an excellent way to approach the problem, and in fact is more scientific than blindly accepting recommendations that have dozens of conflicting influences outside simple public health. This became particularly apparent to me as I now battle a chronic GI immune condition that has made my life extremely difficult over the past year. It took a full year to actually diagnose, and even then, what was the best doctors could tell me? "We have no idea what causes it, but we know it doesn't correlate to cancer. Here's some steroids. Good luck." I am not saying any vaccination causes this—I simply don't know—but it's that kind of doubt in the field that makes people doubt blanket statements on all vaccinations, whether that be right or wrong.

I agree with the author of this piece: we need more empathy, more understanding, and much less confrontation. But we also need more science, and a better understanding of science, and a more nuanced, honest discussion of vaccines in medicine and society. In a complex world, when a scientist hears "All X are good," they are right to be skeptical of it. We need to recognize that we live in a world where no one is allowed to have a conversation on vaccines based on reality. Instead, any discussion that doesn't qualify itself with the greatness of vaccines and the wrongness of anti-vaxxers instantly labels you an anti-vaxxer yourself, and loses you all credibility.

This article, too, succumbs to that mental virus. I refuse to. He says, "my point isn't that the anti-vaxxers might be right. They're not." With that attitude, we'll never be able to understand the problem scientifically as a populace, and that's what's wrong with our response to anti-vaxxers—not that they're wrong and delusional. If you want real empathy, stop calling people wrong all the time, and start trying to understand their fear instead of dismissing it and strategically trying to quell it.

I know people like this. They don't think their view is rational and they do things like buy plane tickets for their kids.