Measles side effects: Virus versus vaccine

The most common  reason people give for not vaccinating their children, always appears to be a fear of the side effects.  Of course the vaccine has side effects any medicine does and if the medicine or alternative treatment you are taking doesn't have any side effect then it isn't working. The body is a very delicately balanced system and anything that alters its function risks having an adverse effect.

The thing is that getting an infection has a risk too but the information is often harder to find since the makers of the vaccine must report on all side effects even if it is unlikely to be related to the vaccine. So here are the risks of the vaccines versus the risk of the virus side by side.

If you wish to make a true risk assessment current measles incidence rate in Australia is 6 per million and the for the U.S.A is 0.7 per million. This would put the risk of both encountering the virus and getting a symptom such as low platelet count lower than the risk of getting the side effect from the vaccine as long as you do not travel or meet anyone who travels. However many of the complications from the virus never occur from the vaccine or may not be linked to the vaccine but have just occurred in someone within 3 months after becoming vaccinated. In these cases you are still at higher risk non-vaccinating.
Of course there are other reasons to vaccinate.

References
https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/cda-cdi3302k.htm
http://www.health.vic.gov.au/immunisation/factsheets/mmr.htm#sideeffects
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12415036
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/measles-mumps-vaccination-and-hearing-loss
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/vaccines/mumps
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7247494