How is it helpful, for a child with uneducated anti-vaccine parents to be excluded from school......Surely that just creates another uneducated anti-vaccine person.
I agree with this. As it is there is a very high rate of anti-vax parents in the home education community. That's not to say that all or even most home-educating families don't vaccinate, just that there is almost certainly a higher proportion of unvaccinated children that are home educated than there is in schools. If vaccinations were a school requirement it wouldn't push up rates of vaccination, it would push up rates of home educators. And it's been my experience of home educators that those who don't vaccinate tend to drift together, not so much specifically because of vaccinations but because they have other values in common. So the unvaccinated children would live their lives in a bubble of anti-vaxxers and their education about vaccines would be dominated by the idea that they are harmful.
I honestly think that if you want to increase vaccination rates there needs to be a massive fucking change in the way this discussion is held. It's been allowed to become a really polarised debate with two sides who mock pretty much everything the other side says and both sides being guilty of very, very selective honesty. I'm a proponent of vaccines, I've taken every vaccine I've been offered, I was told I was the first person in Wales to get the vaccine against whooping cough vaccine in pregnancy in 2012. My son is not just completely up to date but has had a few extras. But I still think that the "pro-vaccine" side is selective in it's honesty.
The truth is there have been verified cases of vaccine damage, vaccines are not suitable for everyone and some people are justified in their concerns. The diseases we vaccinate against aren't actually that big a deal in the majority of cases. I had Measles when I was 3, it was very unpleasant but it was fine. I had rubella then mumps one after the other when I was 5 and any ill feeling I had was vastly outweighed by the novelty. Rubella and mumps were honestly a good time. Trying to terrify people about diseases that they very likely had and have mostly pleasant memories of won't work. It can't. Especially if it's done as a form of gaslighting, insisting that those illnesses are worse than the cases where vaccine damage has happened. People will bed down obstinately if they are up against that.
The discussion needs to be honest if we are going to change minds. Vaccine damage happens in certain rare circumstances, so some people can't ever be vaccinated. Odds are those people are some of the most vulnerable to the illnesses being vaccinated against. Your healthy child will be almost certainly fine if vaccinated or if they get one of those illnesses but if you vaccinate you will play a part in that illness being wiped out. Your healthy child will be using their health to protect those who need it most. Those who were born with the privilege of health are for the first time in history able to use that privilege to extend protection to those without it. It's amazing. Getting a vaccine makes you a fucking superhero.
Let people with concerns feel listened to rather than dismissed and gaslighted. Diminish the power of those who use that feeling of being afraid and unheard into promotion of woo. Let people feel that their concerns were real but possibly misplaced. Let them feel powerful in their social responsibility to the less fortunate. Let kids feel like powerful protectors when they have been vaccinated rather than potential victims who needed saving. The vaccine is less of a shield for them but a way of extending their own health as a shield that protects everyone. Kids will want to be part of that, so even if their parents are too bedded into the selfishness by their fears, those kids will be arranging their own vaccines at 18 and vaccinating their own.