I think I get your point. My point is that I work in health sector, and people usually get very surprised when you tell them you have 5 babies in ICU caused by preventable / vaccinable diseases. For us is another monday, for their parents is a terrible experience.

The babies usually don't die, and usually get a full recovery. So it doesn't come up in the news. But you, as a parent, don't want to have your baby hospitalized or in ICU: it's very stressful, it has health consequences short and long term. My point is "don't reduce consequences to life-death", because there are a lot of in between consequences you don't want for your kid.

I like your "secondary safety net" image. It's secondary because you vaccine (the first safety net), but when people trust blindly the secondary safety net so they get rid of the first safety net, you only have one primary safety net. It's like getting rid of the safety belt now the cars have airbags.

This is a dilemma of the prisoner: you can "bet" your children won't get infected even without vaccine and even if he catches the infection he would get through it easily, so you don't have any risks from the vaccine. That works if non-vaccinated are only a few, but above some point the herd immunity is lost and the most vulnerable kids will have to suffer serious consequences.

If I didn't want to vaccinate my kids, I would fight tooth and nail as a pro-vaccines, so the herd immunity covers them.

I'm not sure why you say "price tag is low". It's not low at all, and it's totally avoidable at the cost of a few thousands shots. In the age of medical system underfunding (or in any case, affected by cuts) the health management must look at every avoidable expense, and IC beds are quite some expense. Add to that the increased predictability of a vaccinated population and you have the winner option. I'm only talking money here, and I'll leave the societal and personal implications for others to look at.