Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson recently reversed his opposition on mandatory childhood vaccination. When asked what caused him to make a U-turn and adopt what would seem to be an anti-libertarian position, he said,
I’ve come to find out that without mandatory vaccines, the vaccines that would in fact be issued would not be effective.…It’s dependent [on having]mandatory vaccines so that every child is immune. Otherwise, not all children will be immune even though they receive a vaccine.
This line of argument is one of the main pillars behind forcing parents not only to vaccinate their kids but to do so on the government’s schedule, which includes more and more vaccines given on the same day, plus a vaccination at birth aimed to prevent a sexually transmitted illness. But is the herd immunity argument true? No.