What two parties?
Here in the US, we have one ultra-conservative party owned by corporations, with two wings who are badmouthing each other like two football teams. It's posturing and arguing over trifles - the closer they get, the more they posture and badmouth each other, to make the masses believe there is a real difference.
And the astonishing thing is that the American public buys it, wholesale, apart from some even scarier people on the extreme right wing.

But up until recently, those children would have a greatly reduced chance of reaching adulthood. But due to things like vaccination programs, safe playgrounds and school healthcare, we skew the statistics in favor of the less fit, who now survive at a much higher rate.
Personally, I don't think this risk reduction is a good thing. It may be for individuals, but not for society, long term. If there's no genetic disadvantage to being stupid, stupidity will flourish.

You're begging the question at least twice here, using your belief that life should be saved and suffering avoided at all costs as justification for saving life and avoiding suffering through vaccination.

For costs, do you think I favor treatment when I don't favor vaccination? Let the weak die. It's the low cost solution. Spend that money on something that has long term value, like physics.

As for realization of human potential, sorry, you're wrong. As the weak die, they get replaced with other individuals who can realize their human potential. The higher the mortality, the higher the birth rate can (and will) be. It's a zero sum game.
If your kids die, change partners to try to make better ones, or adopt some poor but healthier 3rd world kids. No potential lost.

I care a lot - about humanity, and our far future, and far less about individuals who live today. Does that make me callous? Perhaps. I think that's needed, as a reaction to the kum-ba-yah society of today where everyone are indoctrinated to cuddle and care about their own culture, and not give a fuck about the future or those with different complexion.

The saying goes that one person dead is a tragedy, a hundred dead is news, and a million dead is statistics. I think it should be the other way around. Let hundreds die now to save millions in the future, and don't spend a second worrying about individuals dying. Individuals are a renewable resource, humanity is not.

On average, we lose more of those who are less able.

If the ability you refer to is the ability to survive exposure to certain illnesses without vaccination, why is it worth developing? We've got that covered with the vaccines.

No, what I refer to is that predators and illnesses tend to reap the weakest, increasing the average health of the herd. Inoculation protects the weak as much as the strong, leading to a herd that's on average less healthy than herds subject to predation.

It was answered to a post by a non-AC.
In short, it's not an acceptable chain because it relies on the unsubstantiated belief that death is inherently bad. I cannot accept that on face value. Back it up with something that doesn't beg the question.

But that's exactly the path we're on now, where we dictate that those with money or socialized medicine are more important and thus will be saved. If we ban vaccinations, we don't dictate who are more important. It's not our decision anymore then.

Yes, I say, let people die. We lose some geniuses, but we also lose some bible thumpers. On average, we lose more of those who are less able. That's how culling works.

When did "think of the children!" become a valid argument on /.?

Is culling of the herd necessarily a bad thing for humanity in the long perspective?

You first.

Culling != suicide.
I've survived the cullings so far. I survived measles, influenza, climbing trees and navigating traffic. In a while, I'll be old and more of an encumberance than asset to the herd, and I'll be picked off. That's fine with me.

What's your logical foundation for your belief that all human life is precious?
It is pure faith, ingrained in you by societal pressure, and that's precisely why you're offended. If it was based on logic, why would you feel offended?
I don't feel offended if people tell me that Bernoulli forces is all that holds a plane up in the air - I think they're wrong, and can argue it. But offended? No, that requires trampling on a belief.

Atheists can have faith too. They just don't have faith in deities. But they are usually quite burdened with cultural beliefs that have little rational reasoning behind them, but are taken on faith. Like taboos, and indeed the belief that death is evil.

It's the reason for the opinion that matters.

If someone says vaccinations are bad because a small number of vaccinations leads to complications, or bad because vaccines could be better, I'd say the reasoning is flawed.

If someone says vaccinations are bad because representatives of an imaginary deity says so, I'd say the reasoning isn't just flawed, but completely lacking.

However, I have a very hard time dismissing the argument that the belief that "all deaths are evil" should be dismissed from the equation as much as any other faith, and that evolution would work faster and lead to an improved species in the long run if we allowed culling of the herd and didn't seek to increase life spans, and that the enormous sums of money spent on medical research and treatments would have more impact for humanity if spent on other sciences.

Yes, but that does not lead to "... therefore, we should vaccinate".

If taking faith out of the equation, namely the belief that "all deaths are bad", the picture becomes less clear.

Is culling of the herd necessarily a bad thing for humanity in the long perspective?
Is there a plus for humanity to increasing lifespans, or will that slow down evolution?
Would humanity be better off if we put half of the money that goes to medical science and practice into other sciences?

Anti-vax zealots are coming.

I think you mean anti-wax zealots.
HTH, HAND.

And that all "anti-vaxxers" are wrong is your professional medical experience talking, or are you holding her to standards you don't hold yourself too?

What celebrity did this Jenny person get medical advice from?

I admin several UEFI booting servers, and they can take several minutes probing and verifying hadware and firmware before the boot commences.
The switch from BIOS to UEFI has not helped one bit - rather the opposite, as the drive containing the UEFI boot binaries has to be enumerated and verified before the binaries can be loaded.

Keep in mind that the kernel needs to not only work with PCs, but servers and embedded devices (where there's neither BIOS nor UEFI). Making things work well for 80% and to hell with the 20%, like some New Programmers advocate, is not viable for universal software like the LInux kernel.