I have had the flu 3 times that I know of, maybe 4. I was too weak to walk from one end of the house to the other and had a fever of 104, along with the respiratory symptoms, headaches, etc. I don't want to experience that again, personally. It's much worse than a cold. And since I work with kids (teacher), I get a flu vaccine every year.

The 1918 flu pandemic killed between 50-100 million people worldwide in just a few short months. This was about 3% of the world population at the time, and apparently 500 million people, or 27% of the world's population were infected. (stats from wikipedia).

Because of the success of many vaccines, I think that the average person does not have any idea of the devastation caused by the diseases that they prevent. If they had lived through a serious epidemic, they would be much more willing to accept the risks. They also don't realize how quickly some of these disease may spread if the percentage of non-vaccinated individuals rises above a certain point. I suspect it will take a tragic epidemic to get some people to rethink this.