Could criminal charges be successful? Should they be? What about a civil case?
The article points out that the scientific capability exists to show that one person transmitted the disease to another with a high degree of confidence but not certainty.
I think we may see one or more civil, if not criminal, cases at some point; perhaps even from the recent Disneyland episode.
Thoughts?
Mom: Family that refused vaccination put my baby in quarantine
I don’t think they should be criminally liable, but I certainly wouldn’t object to such people being open to civil lawsuits.
That article says that it cost them money, and they suffered emotional turmoil from concern over their child’s health. Maybe they have a case. What’s interesting about this case is that there’s no need to show that transmission occurred. The un-vaccinated child was unquestionably the direct cause of their problems.
The way I see it, there’s no downside to being an anti-vaxer. (Except for your kid possibly dying, and infecting others; but you know what I mean.) Some or most (?) schools require that children be vaccinated. I’d like to see Disneyland and other attractions to deny entry to unvaccinated children who are old enough to be vaccinated. Will they lose business? Yes. Will it be burdensome for parents to carry a vaccination card for each of their children? Yes. OTOH I can imagine lawsuits against amusement parks for creating an environment where dangerous diseases can spread. It might be worth it to them.
‘Oh, but my precious little snowflake must go to Disneyland! It’s unfair!’
No, it’s unfair of anti-vax parents to expose others to diseases because of their wilful ignorance and negligence. Their children are most welcome in the parks… as soon as they’ve received their shots.
Where it would start to get ugly is when people claim to have a sincere religious objection. I can imagine someone arguing that being subject to criminal or even civil liabilities for not vaccinating is an infringement on their first amendment right to freedom of religion.
Those first amendment protections have never been an absolute no-holds-barred get out of jail free card, but with the current supreme court, you never know how it may go down. And you just know that there’s some organization that would bankroll some parents’ fight all the way to the SCOTUS.
News out of Los Angeles (KNX news radio) that a pediatrician has refused to accept new patients if they have not been vaccinated. He doesn’t want to risk infections to his other patients.
I can see two other points of ugliness. There are kids that don’t get vaccinated against certain disease because it’s medically contraindicated. There will be some parents that do get their child vaccinated but are just generally opposed to showing medical records to businesses. I can almost see the media stories about little Billy with a terminal illness that suppresses immune function unable to go see Mickey.
The doctor doing it probably takes out the second issue (you share medical records with the doctor) I’d bet he’s understanding of the contraindications for vaccine. The ticket drone at Disney… not so much.
I don’t think there’s any contradiction between a right not to vaccinate a child for religious reasons, and an obligation to keep your unvaccinated child the hell away from other children during an outbreak or when they display potential measles/mumps/rubella symptoms. I see no reason why a parent that negligently ignores this obligation should not be civilly liable in the ordinary way.
That’d be easy - get a letter from the doctor stating why your child can’t be vaccinated. Or if there really were a “vaccination card” have a space for “cannot be vaccinated” and have the doctor sign that.
I don’t think anyone’s up in arms about kids that can’t be vaccinated not having vaccinations. They’re usually brought up as reasons for vaccination, after all, because they’re the ones (along with babies too young to be vaccinated) who are put at risk by the intentionally unvaccinated.
The religious civil liberties people probably woud scupper the plans though, agreed.
If your religion prohibits vaccination then little Sally and Timmy don’t get to go to Disneyland. You don’t have a “right” to visit an amusement park.
Your right to religion does not extend to the “right” to endanger others.
Question.
Why is it not already a federal mandate that unvaccinated children without a legitimate medical exception are barred from public schools? Seriously, why?
And the idea of civil suits from this is a really good one. If parents fail to take necessary precautions, particularly if they do so intentionally and wilfully, an their children cause damages to others, then they should absolutely see punishment for that.
It does not make sense to me to mandate vaccinations, nor to hold parents accountable for selfish beliefs. There is a slope there that is slippery.
If you want to protect your children, vaccinate them. At some point the anti-vaxxers will figure it out.
I do support clinicians refusing to see those who have refused vaccinations (personally or by parental proxy). And I support third party payers being permitted to refuse medical bills for illnesses against which vaccination was available but refused.
Ultimately the decision not to vaccinate is very selfish. You need everyone else to take what minimal risk there is so that the illness does not exist, and then you get protection risk-free. But I am not in favor of governmental nannying for it.
Let a few kids die or become post-encephalitic veggies, and I think the anti-vaxxers will probably come around.
What we may wind up seeing is a lawsuit against pediatricians who foster antivax attitudes, when one of their unvaccinated patients winds up infecting a young child who experiences serious complications or dies.
Pediatricians who encourage vaccine avoidance and make unsupported claims (as one recently did, arguing that the current measles outbreak in California doesn’t pose any risk to a healthy child), may be taking a big risk themselves.
But it’s not that simple. Children can’t be vaccinated before a certain age and some children can never be vaccinated.
Which is why you need herd immunity. The relatively small number that can’t be vaccinated don’t prevent herd immunity, but if enough people without legitimate reason refuse to vaccinate then the percentage of un-vaccinated becomes too high and you lose herd immunity. At that point those who legitimately can’t be vaccinated are put at risk.
It doesn’t seem to be in the direct purview of powers granted to the Federal Government. They could play the “do this or no Federal Funding” game like with some areas but it’s a weak lever in education. The overwhelming majority of public school funding comes from the state/local level. A bill mandating vaccinations or they withhold Head Start and school lunch program funding might be a dangerous game of political chicken that legislators don’t want to play.
It’s not uncommon. My boss was a pediatrician, and fired parents from his practice if they refused to vaccinate their children.
I only have a minute…
I disagree. Mandated vaccinations make sense from a public safety perspective. Society benefits from the reduced risk of a serious, sometimes deadly, disease. See: Polio, smallpox.
Parents should be accountable. If they do not vaccinate their little plague-carriers, and people are infected, then they are responsible for causing the illness, or even death, of another person or persons.
Not all children can be vaccinated. In the story I linked, the child was too young to receive a vaccination. The only protection such a child would have against something like measles is to not be exposed. Since it is unreasonable to isolate a child from other children for its entire first year (at least), and it is not unreasonable for parents to have their children who are of age vaccinated not only to protect their own children, but society at large.
The article doesn’t say the kid with measles was unvaccinated. The MMR vaccine is not 100% effective, so it’s possible that the sick kid was vaccinated and contracted the disease anyway due to exposure to one of the Disneyland carriers.
It says quite clearly that the child was un-vaccinated.
I suppose that you could interpret that as saying that his parents refused vaccination for themselves (but did have their child vaccinated) but in context that seems like a very unlikely interpretation.