We didn’t need mandated vaccination to eradicate smallpox and polio.
You and the other one both want to say I’m ignorant.
Look, I worked in a hospital for eight years. I’ve discussed the matter at length. We were offered flu shots every year.
Every year, we all had this same discussion. Doctors, pharmacists, a seemingly infinite number of nurses.
I’m well informed on the subject. Please keep your laws off my body.
EDIT- if we were talking about ERADICATING a disease rather than controlling it, I might decide the other way.
What about quarantining permanently people who refuse vaccination? They can do whatever they want with their body as long as they can’t be a disease vector.
Pretty sure that in many cases, if you knowingly give someone an STD without telling them ahead of time that you knew you were positive for HIV or whatever, you can be criminally charged, and civilly sued.
I’m fine with that.
And I’m fine with people who keep their kids or themselves from being vaccinated locked away in prison.
If a person knowingly spreads an STD, charges can be successfully brought against them. And you better believe if you’re spreading something like syphyilis around town, you are going to be on your local public health department’s shit list.
Having a weak immune system will make you more likely to spread a disease.
Working on sick patients will make you more likely to spread disease.
Coming into contact with multiple people during the course of the day will make you more likely to spread disease.
Not covering your mouth when you sneeze will make you more likely to spread disease.
You are talking about a situation that a person is taking a specific action towards spreading disease. Mandatory vaccinators want to throw people in cages, strap them down, and inject them with something that could potentially kill them because those people are more likely to spread disease. Why won’t you recommend this treatment to rude sneezers and popular people?
It’s not really comparable when vaccination almost completely removes the chance of contracting or spreading a disease, and is an extremely simple, one-time (or very occasional) measure to take.
To those who oppose the idea of governments requiring vaccination for reasons of personal rights, would you support any kind of carrot/stick motivation to get vaccinated?
Some here want to lock away anti-vaxers in concentration camps. I dont see any irresponsible STD spreaders in prison.
Before this thread gets any more hysterical, please link me to the outbreak of all these diseases being spread by the few who refuse to be vaccinated. Please show my the utility of locking them away. The more hysterical amongst you are the same ones who whine the loudest about our current prison population.
We can no more force a child to be vaccinated than we could force her to have an abortion (against the parents will). Do we really want a government that coerces the health choices of its citizens?
It is perfectly possible to sue for damages when a person who knows he or she has an STD transmits it to another person. It isn’t done all that often, because of the difficulty in collecting damages, but it is done.
I’m not sure why parents who fail to vaccinate a healthy child couldn’t be sued under existing laws, provided it could be proved that the unvaccinated child infected another. I can’t really think of a reason why such suits should be discouraged either; as with other conduct recognized to be negligent and actionable, the threat of being sued could be a deterrent for those parents who choose to endanger their own kids and other people’s rather than vaccinate a healthy kid.
Are there really doctors who advise against vaccinating a healthy kid? Surely the small risk of problems from vaccinations is outweighed by the danger of contracting a potentially life-threatening infection?
Sure…give kids stickers, give out gift cards to Walmart, heck, bring back the sugar cubes! I have no problem with bribes to encourage people to vaccinate. That would at least bring in some of the careless, clueless and lazy contingent - the folks who aren’t anti-vaxx, but can’t be arsed to bring their kid to the pediatrician’s office or clinic often enough. I wouldn’t even mind a “stick” in the form of having an extra 32 forms to fill out when registering your unvaccinated kid for school. But my ethic for bodily autonomy stops me from approving of mandated vaccines…in the best of all possible worlds. Which we’re not in. So I grudgingly accept mandatory vaccinations, but I don’t *like *them.
But I feel ya, aNewLeaf. I share that feeling: I want people to *want *to vaccinate their kids and themselves, and I want the government out of medical procedures, period. So I think our primary tool should be education, not punishment. Not just education that’s defensive against anti-vaxxers’s idiotic claims, but…I don’t know…marketing. Stick up billboards of an exhausted looking mother holding a bottle of calamine lotion and a crying baby. That would convince people to vaccinate. Remind them not of the *possibility of death *from vaccine preventable illness ('cause that’s just playing Fear from the other side, and let’s be real, very few kids die of chicken pox) but highlight the inconvenience, expense and guilt it causes when your kid is sick from something you could have prevented. Aren’t those pretty much the trifecta of marketing success: inconvenience, expense and guilt? Use 'em for good, for once.
Now…the activist antivaxxers and “scientists” creating and spreading lies and nonsense? THEY should be charged, no question. Andrew fucking Wakefield should be charged with thousands of counts of murder.
Im pro vax but the hysteria here and over-reaction is silly. Put people in concentration camps? Put people on trial for murder? Part of the problem is that vaxers arent open enough about the (very small) risk of vaccinations. Thus, they play right into the hands of the anti-vax crowd.
And, I guess, the argument that a woman (or man) has the right to do with their body as they wish is inconvenient in this case.
Why first world? You don’t think some mothers in African villages won’t go to the clinic because they heard that vaccines will hurt their babies? They don’t count as casualties of the misinformation campaign?
No one’s arguing seriously in favor of concentration camps. Or Texas which is probably worse in August.
Certainly no intelligent pro-vax advocate argues that vaccines don’t carry risks, however small. Suggesting otherwise is a misreading of many of the responses in this thread. The problem is what do you do when someone deliberately ignored health measures and spread dangerous and infectious diseases?
I’m personally not in favor of mandatory vaccines. I am in favor of making life as difficult as possible for those who don’t vaccinate for non-medical reasons. This would include telling them to homeschool or avoid becoming a nurse if they do not want to get a flu shot each year.
I’m pro vaccine but I also think bodily autonomy is too important to jeopardize. Education and incentives are the better route.
I also have concerns about the development of a mandatory program with regard to newer vaccines. Sure, over time, the vaccines we have now for older diseases have gotten most of the kinks worked out of them, and we can probably trust academic based research for the most part to be relatively unbiased.
But given the poor track record of profit motivated corporate research with regard to hiding or downplaying problems with products until forced to recall them, serious problems with certain newer vaccines such as for HPV, and the poor record of politically motivated government health agencies with regard to things like global warming, GMO, drug scheduling, and the food pyramid, I’m not really keen on letting them make decisions about my body.
