Comment by ModernMech

I was responding to this point:

  It is trivial today to get whatever level of fluoride is recommended for dental health, via toothpaste. So there is no compelling need to fluoridate as there exist viable alternatives to achieve the same that fluoridation is for any other purpose than dental health.

I also agree that people should be able to make decisions like this, but they should be aware that one of the results of these kinds of efforts could be that everyone gets less healthy, rather than everyone stays at the same level of health with less cost.

Presumably when they voted to get rid of fluoride in the water in Calgary, they didn't do so expecting the outcome would be that people in their town would be less healthy overall. Nonetheless, that was the outcome of their vote.

The anecdote shows that it's not trivial, because when the fluoride in the water went away, people were not able to trivially replace it, leading to worse health outcomes. Ultimately people found too high of a cost, seeing as that they reversed the decision.

Sadly it took a decade for them to realize their mistake. I worry people today are making the same mistake, and we will reverse it in a decade after health outcomes are shown to have worsened.