"Re being well informed - I can only judge based on what you've been writing on the other thread. Perhaps you could read some more about waning immunity to the pertussis vaccine and the absence of herd immunity to whiling cough as a result?"
I am well aware that there are some exceptional situations to herd immunity - I just don't see how they are relevant to a debate as to if herd immunity exists are not. This example is an example of an exception, not proof that you should not vaccinate.
"You also seem very unwilling to accept people's experiences of vaccine damage although you have admitted that it does occur."
Of course it is possible for damage to occur from any drug or vaccine. This is about extent, and diagnosis. Is the incidence of damage more than the manufacturer side effects stats say they should be? How do we know? One way we can't know is by totally unqualified people diagnosing this damage for themselves by using the method: "vaccine - then my child got ill - therefore it must have been the vaccine. Let's tell everyone vaccines are bad." Why can you not see the difference between peer reviewed scientific studies, which any reasonable person would accept, and amateur parents who 'think' they have diagnosed vaccine damage because 'they know what they saw'? Just because it is possible for damage to occur - how does this in any reasonable situation suddenly mean it occurs in far more cases than all the pre-release tests say it should do?
"If all parents' accounts of bad reactions were dismissed/ignored/passed off as coincidence by doctors where would we be?"
You speak as though there is a legion of angry parents with 1000's of ASD children all shouting for justice. Show me the evidence (beyond a few vocal individuals who like to put themselves about for whatever personal reasons they have) of these people. How many are there? Why has not one study shown any link? Where is the hard evidence, not highly circumstantial? I am not saying that these people should be totally ignored, but as with many other things that look to be one thing, there seems to be other explanations, and it is about how many compared to how many vaccination have been given. If you search through Mumsnet, you can find many accounts from people who had their child suddenly drop into ASD spontaneously. Why did that happen? What might they have said if the child had just had, say an MMR jab? No conviction without guilt - vaccines serve a critically important job; and unless we can find proof, the few vocal people are doing nothing but spreading hysteria. Our friend in the other thread certainly makes it her business to contribute to pages and pages of threads about vaccines on here; always managing to use phrases like 'my vaccine-damaged child' somewhere. Try searching for her username and the word vaccine.
"Or is that what you think should happen to avoid 'mass hysteria'."
We are already starting to get it. The lies, bunkum and claptrap is spreading like a cancer using the internet. Websites popping up making outlandish claims about vaccines (far worse than we see here); it seems any nutjob with a PC can have their say, and some dimwits just swallow it.