Any sufficiently intelligent and reasonable person could decide for themselves if gravity exists, It's not like our understanding of physics emerged fully-formed from the head of Zeus.
Any sufficiently intelligent and reasonable person wouldn't be questioning the established medical fact that vaccines provide an overwhelming net benefit. If they are, they almost certainly are not qualified to make an educated decision about it.
It's fine and dandy to play expert without a formal education in almost every situation, but in this case the lives of people, _and not just your own children_ is in play.
>Any sufficiently intelligent and reasonable person wouldn't be questioning the established medical fact that vaccines provide an overwhelming net benefit.
The problem with your position is that people still die from taking medication. Low statistical significance of harm doesn't matter to you if you're one of the statistically few that ends up harmed.
Statistics are valid over populations. Yes, if one looks simply at the greater good then vaccination to prevent epidemic is a good idea. However imagine a scenario where everyone else is vaccinated but you aren't - you're not exposed to the pathogen as the disease doesn't spread nor exposed to the risk of the vaccine, you win. This is of course not a scalable response.
Disease control requires those involved to consider the population and not the individual it would be beneficial to this end to pretend the vaccine is perfect and incapable of harm, this produces the best results for the whole population.
Looking further, you rightly say "vaccines" provide a net benefit. Of course one is being vaccinated with a particular vaccine which, by the nature of vaccines may not have been tested beyond cursory short term tests. We can't wait 5 years for the results of double blind experiments on a vaccine when it's been rushed in to mass production to match a particular strain of pathogen. Yes the variations may be small but small variations matter.
>It's fine and dandy to play expert without a formal education in almost every situation, but in this case the lives of people, _and not just your own children_ is in play.
Driving in the snow, say, would you do it without a formal education?
Any sufficiently intelligent and reasonable person wouldn't be questioning the established medical fact that vaccines provide an overwhelming net benefit. If they are, they almost certainly are not qualified to make an educated decision about it.
It's fine and dandy to play expert without a formal education in almost every situation, but in this case the lives of people, _and not just your own children_ is in play.