>If everybody in your community is vaccinated against a severe infectious disease and you refuse, you're still protected because it is extremely unlikely you'll be exposed to the disease in a community with strong immunity.
>
>Once vaccination becomes a lifestyle choice and people start opting out as a symbol of freedom and self determination, that passive protection is lost and you run the risk of epidemic- not just among the unvaccinated, but possibly also affecting those in whom vaccination didn't work so well.
>
>IOW some people are harshly critical of conformity in others even though their alternative choices rely on it.

So you mean the religious community is providing a valuable service to me, and I'm blissfully unaware of it?

Quite possible, since I don't know what service would that be. Few things I saw them do probably don't qualify (asking for money and knocking on my door trying to get me to read their stuff, taking over the whole street so I have to park two blocks away, occupying all TV channels for a whole month, occupying a lot of local FM bandwidth... that comes to mind).

>This isn't new- Europeans have only been able to pursue their vision of peace and prosperity because of the US military, but lets not go there ;-)

I won't, and I'm European. But my country basically freed itself, the Soviets only came in the last months for the final push - so my ancestors' butts are not in this game. And afterwards, we were outside both blocs, so thanks but no t(h)anks to both sides of the cold war.