It's the 3rd generation problem:
- 1st generation: founds a company in their basement, works hard, builds it up
- 2nd generation: works with their parents, sweeps floors, learns the ropes, inherits the company, and grows it even bigger while knowing what it took to build in a basement to begin with
- 3rd generation: didn't see the basement, never worked at sweeping and late nights to keep it going. Only reaped the benefits, money, and prestige of being from the family. When they inherit they see the company as a money pinata and start crushing it so they can go on more expensive junkets.
I feel we're seeing a similar pattern with disease and vaccinations.
- The 1st generation lived with the diseases, lost friends, and saw as people were crippled around them by Polio, Measles, and Whooping Cough. The invention of each new vaccine was a medical miracle and mostly embraced as a piece of salvation from the horrors of disease.
- The 2nd generation was exposed to adults who had been crippled and lost family so they're directly motivated to vaccinate to avoid such tragedies.
- Now we're into the 3rd generation zone. Who here has personally seen someone on crutches for life from Polio? Who here saw someone whose brain was destroyed by Measles? Who here has spoken with someone whose lungs were permanently damaged by Whooping Cough? Some have, but not nearly enough to make the community as a whole believe that these illnesses truly exist and that they truly harm us when given free reign. They balance this lack of direct exposure against much lower likelihood issues (tiny chances of vaccines causing side effects) and decide that since only two people per year die form tetanus, why should they get a vaccine for it? This is how a company is killed by the same family who built it, and we're going to be killed by the ignorant who fail to vaccinate.