Capitalism and herd management are competing forces. We Westerners think we're individuals, and each of us are free to make our own decisions. We completely i

Capitalism and herd management are competing forces. We Westerners think we're individuals, and each of us are free to make our own decisions. We completely ignore the medical advice, and want the best treatment possible. We want to take the antibiotics. We want a biopsy of that lung nodule. We want an MRI for that persistent migraine. We want to decide whether our child receives "possibly dangerous" vaccines. Statistics be damned. Unfortunately, with antibiotics on one end of the spectrum (we take too many), and vaccines on the other end (we don't take enough), herd management is the right answer (we should all be pretty much forced to do the medically-suggested thing), and we utterly reject that. It's the tragedy of the immune system commons.