It was not stated that vaccination is 100% safe, but that it is overwhelmingly safe.
There are definitely people in “weakened condition or otherwise at risk” who cannot be immunized (i.e. those with certain immune deficiencies/immunosuppression) who depend on the rest of us to be properly immunized so that their risk of a serious/life-threatening disease is kept very low.
An unvaccinated person can “hide in the herd” to a limited extent. Air travel constantly poses the hazard of an unvaccinated person entering the country and infecting the unprotected. The more people that think herd immunity makes it unnecessary for them and their kids to be vaccinated, the greater the risk. Also, there’s such a thing as outright disease eradication if immunization rates with a highly effective vaccine are high enough.
Not that this means mandating vaccination on a national level is a good idea. Further stirring up the libertarianoids in addition to antivaxers would likely be counterproductive.
It only falls apart if the numbers makes it fall apart, which has not been demostrated.
Example effective herd immunity is proven at 94% of the population. As risk population = 2% that will not be vaccinated. Anti-vax crowd stands at 2%, in this hypothetical there is no compelling reason to mandate vaccinations if 96% of the population is willing and able to get vaccinated as you have achieved effective herd immunity.
The numbers can go the other way too, but again near 100% vaccinated you get diminishing returns and at some point could become counter productive, which was my point.
I agree with this lovely quip. How exactly is it relevant? Can you demonstrate that a person who does not get vaccinated is harming a person who chooses to get vaccinated, more than say, alcohol?
To take just one example, the unvaccinated are 23 times more likely to get whooping cough than those who are vaccinated. Pertussis is very dangerous and highly contagious. It carries a 1 in 100 risk of brain damage and a 1 in 250 risk of death for young babies. Society has an inherent right to protect kids from people who refuse immunization against the disease. I do not favor mandatory vaccination but I am in favor of isolation and making life harder for those who choose to side with diseases rather than people.
Where is the break point where society’s inherent right supersedes a parent’s judgement? Where does this right originate from and under what authority?
I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me to be rather obvious that both the baby and society have an inherent interest in being protected against dangerous infectious diseases. The unvaccinated have been denied the right to attend public school. Medical facilities have told employees to get vaccinated or lose their jobs. I’m personally quite happy with both of those actions. Actions have consequences. Deliberate refusal to protect yourself and your children against diseases that can hurt and kill is a socially destructive act and one that members of the general public should have the means of protecting themselves against.
Wait a second, your choice not to get the disease involved you getting vaccinated - not them getting vaccinated. It does not involve them - it’s you. If you get vaccinated and the vaccine is effective you will not get the disease, that is your choice, not theirs. They are not doing you a disservice for not getting vaccinated.
Some people can’t get vaccinated due to age or medical conditions. Babies can’t get certain vaccines right away, for instance. By refusing to vaccinate vaccinatable children, you put that population at risk needlessly.
Even if you vaccinate, vaccines aren’t 100% guaranteed to be 100% effective in 100% of the population. Some people will get vaccinated and it’s not effective. This becomes more and more of a problem the more they encounter unvaccinated carriers.
Children can be raped. Anti-vaxers aren’t rational, but any person with an IQ over 80 should be able to understand that it’s better when rape victims don’t contract cervical cancer later in life.
Since this is GD, I wish to point out that there seems to be a certain attitude with the vac crowd, that being if I did it you should too. Sort of a sour grapes reaction more then for the betterment of society.
To that those people who were vaccinated seem to be of the opinion that they accepted some sort of ‘penalty’ for the betterment of all, but they would perhaps have been better off personally if they did not. I just seems like their is that attitude out there that a vaccine is better for the society but worse for the individual and those who got them were someone duped (or too young and their parents were duped), or should ‘man up’ (or woman up) and take their hit for the betterment of society.
no. This argument isn’t being made in this thread at all, so I have no idea where you got it from…unless you are getting it from anti-vaxers attempting(and utterly failing) to read the minds of their more learned opponents.
Some people cannot get vaccinated. The MMR is not very effective in young children. They are not making a choice to be vulnerable to measles. Nor are those for whom the vaccine does not work. So when someone else who can get vaccinated but chooses not to vaccinate, those people are making the choice for those who cannot get vaccinated. I think that choice of theirs is both stupid and socially destructive. I have every right to lobby on behalf of my views to restrict their ability to harm me or members of my family and community.
What the hell are you hinting at? Because we aren’t using robots to post our positions those positions are somehow defective? If you want to see emotion-driven reason-free posts go to any anti-vac website. The hatred for reasoned positions is thick there. You are definitely pointing that “clouded judgment” finger in the wrong direction.
If enough people don’t get vaccinated, herd immunity goes away. Some people cannot get vaccinated for health reasons, so when more and more people reject vaccinations for “personal belief” reasons, they do in fact make it more likely that other people will get sick. When you don’t get vaccinated you do put other people at risk. I am fine with mandating people get vaccinated so they don’t infect me (or others).
I agree that as more people refuse vaccinations herd immunity is reduced. My comment was in response to **LavenderBlue **who stated that not getting vaccinated was choosing disease for other people. That’s not accurate.
A lot of activity or inactivity taken by people has an indirect effect on others, often negative. To me the question of mandatory vaccinations is one of individual liberty. I fully support voluntary vaccinations and think it’s the most prudent choice people can make. I also think helmets are a prudent choice for motorcycle riders, but I oppose their mandate. We’d be better off banning motorcycles all together, actually, if the goal truly was safety.
We could virtually eliminate poverty by mandatory sterilization and if taken to the extreme, extermination. We could virtually eliminate drunk driving by mandatory ignition interlock devices. We could virtually eliminate obesity by mandating dietary restrictions and exercise regiments. We don’t do these things because they are incredibly invasive.
Forcing medical procedures on people who don’t want them needs to overcome that burden. If it would save 1 life, is it worth it? What level of benefit makes it okay to force medical procedures on other people?
It’s accurate all right. You’re correct that it’s an indirect link, but that’s how it goes with infectious diseases. I am going to ignore the Godwinizing.
I have a lot of empathy for your position but these don’t really match up to the vaccination argument (the drunk-driving comes close but we have laws that require that you don’t drive drunk).
This is one of those situations where there is no good answer. If we pretended that smallpox was making a come-back then I’d support mandatory vaccinations. I guess I feel that mandatory vaccinations is a drastic approach and I don’t think the current situation warrants it (yet). I concede that my approach is reactive and that people might die but I agree with Bone that personal liberty is not to be trampled lightly.
When I hear a pro-vax augment it seems like the common pattern is to express strong emotion (you are putting me, my children and all of society and the entire human race at risk), and usually citeless argunemts, also claiming it’s common sense that these things are safe everyone knows it.
While the anti-vax crowd takes a different tactic, usually related to ‘don’t take my word for it, here is a cite (www.some web site.com), and here is another (www. some other web site.whatever)’.
The pattern does not seem to match up to how it should be, which calls into question why this issue is different.
Even if the anti-vax crowd has somehow achieved this masterpiece of social manipulation, it would still be incumbent for the pro-vax crowd to reacquire the scientific high ground in debate to regain credibility as opposed to appealing to emotion.