I was recently in Australia and like other developed countries, vaccination rates fell; heard immunity decreased. There being a strong tendency in authoritarianism there the Federal and state governments all passed various laws to force vaccination. The hold outs, apart from the whitey anti-vax nutters who also tend to have pet crystals and read astrology and shit like that were various ethnics and immigrants. In some of them in their plaaces of worship, vaccination was condemned as the work of shaytan and part of a plot.
I found the same nonsense in Scandinavia and Germany and France.
In various US govt reports on threats to security, pandemics have been identified as a major issue. The usual candidates are influenza (which has killed in Australia about 200 this winter), ebola and other hemorrhagic infections, which is spreading through parts of central Africa, SARS in Asia and bubonic and pneumonic plague, whih has recently been detected in about half a dozen countries. There is a www site I saw that tracks these things. Anyway, polio, measles and mumps are deadly and on the rise. And small pox appears to have returned.
The possibility of not only a pandemic but a multi-pronged pandemic is very high.
So these parents are being idiots. And irresponsible. But are we justified in coercing them?
I have my mountain retreat.