Anti-Vaxer = Anti-Smart

  For all of human history, viruses have been one of our greatest foes. There are almost a limitless amount of these microscopic assailants and cause symptoms ranging from a mild fever to ones causing death. While the body does have defense mechanisms against these viruses through the creation of memory cells, which can recognize a virus and start creating specific antibodies that can eliminate the virus from the body, this process can only begin when the body is introduced to a virus for the first time and is slow enough for the virus to do serious damage(including death) before the antibodies can be produced. On top of this, the sheer number of viruses means that for most of human history the chance of encountering a virus which the body had not seen before was very high. These factors have led to viruses being one of the deadliest killers in human history, killing way more people than any living thing has. The rational fear created by viruses has led to a concerted effort to try to eradicate as many of them as possible; leading to the creation of vaccines. Vaccines seek to eradicate viruses by injecting either dummy or weaker versions of the virus allowing the body to build up the memory cells against a weak opponent so that if the actual virus attacks the long initial step can be skipped and the virus will be handled quickly. While some versions of vaccines have been around since the 18th century their effectiveness and widespread usage did not happen until the 20th century, where these vaccines have used to save millions upon millions of lives.

Reduction of Deaths related to diseases after a vaccine was introduced https://ourworldindata.org/reduction-of-cases-and-deaths-of-vaccine-preventable-diseases-in-the-us

 It is in this new world which the Anti-Vax movement was able to rise; a world where the dangers of these viruses are not common knowledge, but rather relics of the past. Whether these people believe vaccines cause autism, which they don't, or believe that the incredibly rare symptoms of vaccines are somehow worse than the actual diseases, due to ignorance of the actual symptoms of the disease, the decision is not just detrimental to these people. This is where it is important to recognize that there are people who are immune to some of these vaccines and because of this are only protected by herd immunity,

Example of how Herd Immunity works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

 or being immune because the disease cannot spread through the people who actually have defenses. This means that by not vaccinating your kids, you are weakening herd immunity and can directly cause other kids to catch the virus. To me, this is the most damning piece of evidence against ant-vexing because you are causing other people to harm because of your own idiocy. A perfect example of this is the recent measles outbreak, which is now the worst outbreak of the virus since 1994.