Except they do just that.
You can’t have it both ways, parents have the right (and the responsibilities that come with the right) to say no to vaccination without the nonsense that is spouted on these threads.
If my kid comes down with measles, I probably will too - that is time off from work for me, it’s a hassle, but it’s part of being a parent. It’s not deadly, we’ll up our vitamin A and then we’ll both have lifelong immunity to it.
I fail to see the irresponsibility in handling it if it happens.
No doubt...
Why on Earth would you say measles is not deadly?
The problem with the decision not to vaccinate is that you don't just risk your kid's life, you endanger other people's lives as well. If your kid comes down with measles, you will probably get it, as will anyone within several yards who is susceptible. Your kid will become contagious about 2 days before symptoms start, so (s)he'll be spreading that virus all over the place without anyone suspecting a thing. Measles virus remains in the air about 2 hours, so people don't even have to be in the same place as your contagious kid, they can enter a room long after your kid left and get measles. Infants younger than 1 year cannot be vaccinated for measles, and the younger a child is, the more serious and potentially deadly the disease will be.
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known. In the current outbreak, about 1/5 of the people who have caught it have ended up in the hospital. Measles is also deadly, killing 1-3 out of every thousand kids who gets it. Around 400 kids die every day from measles.
Children's author Roald Dahl told this story about his daughter Olivia:
"Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.
"'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her.
"'I feel all sleepy,' she said.
"In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead."
This happened in 1962, before there was a vaccine. I was born in 1960 and was lucky to never catch measles; I was vaccinated in my mid 20s.