Canada

Here's the fundamental misunderstanding about vaccines; they're not perfect, and that's OK.

Vaccines do not 100% protect against diseases. But when enough people in a group are vaccinated, you achieve something called "herd immunity". This is because your susceptibility to a disease actually depends on how much of it gets into your system. Because vaccines help people kill off the diseases that they're exposed to, they spread less of it to each other, so the disease can never truly get a foothold in any one person. It's constantly fighting to survive, hunted and on the run, instead of setting up a base of operations and spreading out.

So, unfortunately the notion that antivaxxers are only putting their own lives at risk is a fantasy. It's not even just immunocompromised people they threaten. It's everyone. Everyone is more susceptible to infection because of these selfish idiots bringing down our herd immunity levels.

I can't comment on the mutation risk, but about 1% of people can't get vaccinated for medical reasons. So, persons declining measles and polio vaccines for conspiracy reasons put immunologically susceptible people at greater risk of contracting these previously eliminated diseases. Also, I think we have some obligation to protect children from conspiracy-crazed parents who fail to get their kids immunized. The effects of polio contracted in childhood are lifelong

is it just the lives of the idiots at risk, or is a resistance mutation that'd threaten everyone a risk?

Yes, if a disease gets a foothold, then mutation is always an increased risk.

But it's also not the idiots that are first and most impacted, it's their kids who had no say in the increased risk their idiot parents exposed them to.