It also seems reasonable to me that you need to be vaccinated for admittance into the U.S. - barring a medical reason not to be. So if you want to go overseas - great, to get back in you’ll need to have had your shots.
It seems like more than one of these outbreaks has been “unvaccinated family on missionary trip.”
And to meet the compulsory education need, I’d support charter schools that allow unvaccinated kids - although the charter school needs to inform parents that they allow unvaccinated kids. A regular public school - not unless there is a medical reason
(And completely off topic, I love the name Dorit.)
No, but it was mandated in several countries, and it worked in others because of government-declared martial law and vaccination. And even when it was carried out by NGOs, those had to have government approval and were allowed to work within the country. So yes, government intervention was necessary in the eradication of smallpox. Not just in the US, but elsewhere.
Government assistance, I have no problem with.
When you pass a law requiring invasive and risky procedures is when I object.
My cite is that I worked in a hospital, I was a clerk in a Newborn Intensive Care Unit.
Part of my job was to assist the social worker in cases like this.
You are right that the state can make decisions for a minor- but that is decided on a case-by-case basis, overturning a parent’s decision to refuse treatment.
We had a case where a parent wanted to remove all treatment, and lost custody over that. But there was a court action, it wasn’t automatic.
Edit- all that applies to my state as of the time I was working in the NICU.
I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tar libertarians with this brush. As a libertarian, vaccinations have always been one of the areas where I have argued a government mandate is justified.
Several countries did, and it helped with the eradication of smallpox.
Sure, vaccines carry a risk. But, overall, the side effects of the vaccine may be less, and much less frequent, than the risk of getting the disease itself.
The vaccines on the American vaccine schedule have an incredibly low rate of moderate, let alone serious side effects. Many vaccine-preventable diseases, OTOH, are quite risky. Hib, polio, diphtheria, hep b, tetanus, pertussis all have extremely high mortality and morbidity rates, especially in very young children.
Agreed. Chances of a bad reaction are around one in a million or less.
But there’s 300 million people in this country, most of whom have had multiple vaccines- 50 or more, in some cases.
That adds up to a lot of people hurt or killed by vaccinations, even though the injury rate is quite low.
(As I’ve said when I’ve mentioned risk. It’s very very low, but non-zero)
ETA- “bad reaction” is pretty nebulous. Lots of people get slight fever or similar side effects.
Seconded. Lack of vaccination that results in spreading an illness constitutes an externality, a cost imposed on others that did not chose to incur that cost. Externalities are an area where government intervention is justified.
I’m glad you’re one libertarian who thinks so. Plenty do not (Ron Paul and many followers for instance, and here’s an example of a libertarian website promoting ludicrous, discredited antivax tropes.). From the platform of the Libertarian Party of California:
“we oppose any form of forced or mandated medication such as fluoridation of water, compulsory vaccination”
Not sure how water fluoridation and vaccines qualify as “medication”, but it makes sense to people for whom absolute individual liberty trumps effective health policy.
Please stop saying that, or produce some credible statistics for the “riskiness” of vaccination, so we can compare them to the risks of the diseases that they prevent.
Can’t be done. Those who “believe” that vaccines are risky do so in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There are plenty of stats available for deaths related to those specific diseases being vaccinated against.
What this debate ought to be about is the “Social Contract”. We give up certain personal rights when we choose to live among others. It’s people saying, “I won’t get the pneumonia vaccine because it violates my personhood” (or whatever) but then expecting there to be a hospital bed when they get it.
If/when you believe that those rights you give up are worth more than what you get from living in society then you have every right to move to the middle of nowhere and live off the land.
Please, please, try to get real. It’s risk v. benefits that have to be compared. By citing the risks alone you are ignoring the big picture, that being death from measles far, far, far, far … outnumber reactions to the vaccine.
Lets try this. Your doctor tells you that if your child were to get the flu there was a 1 in 1,000 chance of “very serious”, even life threatening consequences. But adverse reactions to the vaccine are less than 1 in 1,000,000. Do you take those odds? Forget about the potential harm done to children and adults with compromised immune systems that your child might interact with and spread the flu virus to.
I also don’t know why you find this page terrifying.
Let’s take the paragraph on the DTaP vaccine from there:
Note that last sentence. These serious risks are so rare they can’t even tell if they’re even caused by the vaccine.
Compare that to the diseases in question.
The d in the vaccines stands for diphtheria.
Yikes.
The t stands for tetanus.
Tetanus is one of the vaccine-preventable diseases that is not contagious. That’s just about the only safe thing about it.
Ouch.
Last is the aP which stands for aceullar pertussis. Pertussis is also known as whooping cough because that’s the sound people make when they have it. Pertussis can cause you to cough so hard you break a rib.
The disease is most dangerous in young babies:
So the diseases in question are far more dangerous than the vaccine. So dangerous that the risk of death from all three diseases is not minor while the risk of death from the vaccine is so rare we essentially can’t tell if it even exists.
That last sentence refers the the very rare risks, the ones in the section marked “very rare”.
Yes, overall chances of being hurt or killed by a vaccination are very low. Extremely low. About as likely as winning the lottery.
But people win lotteries all the time.
eta-
You can’t compare risk to an individual against benefits to the community. Apples and orchards.
And yes, I would vaccinate my child as I’ve said throughout this thread. I’m pro-vaccination, please read my words.