The disease is risky for promiscuous and IV drug-abusing teenagers, but parents will not reliably predict such behavior so we give the vaccine to everyone at birth. A live virus vaccine is preferred over a safer killed virus vaccine because the live virus vaccine has the secondary effect of exposing unvaccinated children to the virus. The vaccine is only medically justified for a particular ethnic group that is susceptible to the disease, but it is better to vaccinate everyone so that the group is not stigmatized. The risk of getting the disease and dying is 1 in 300,000, and the risk of getting brain damage from the vaccine is 1 in 100,000. It is better to have three brain-damaged babies than one dead baby.
Vaccines make a very powerful argument for socialized medicine.
A broader and centrally-managed vaccine program that goes unchallenged will set an example for government management of other medical operations. All of these arguments are controversial. Most of them have been used to justify vaccines. Physicians who are being asked to recommend and administer vaccines need to know whether some of these arguments are part of the CDC's rationale. Unfortunately, we do not know.