The thread about flu vaccines got me thinking. The gist of Machine Elf’s OP is: does he or we have an obligation to get the flu vaccine because of herd immunity (more people vaccinated reduces the incidence of spreading the flu). This is the very reason I get vaccinated annually. Even with the encouragement of medical professionals, etc. not everyone gets vaccinated. It is estimated that only 40% of the US population was vaccinated for the flu last year, which is up significantly because the widespread news about H1N1. It is estimated that 10-20% of the population get infected with the flu virus. Some people are more prone to catching the flu, etc, and on average about 36,000 people die annually in the U.S. from the flu or factors contributed from having the flu, according to the CDC.
When you think about it, 36,000 deaths every year is quite a bit. That’s currently higher than the annual number of fatalities from traffic accidents in the US, which was just under 34,000 in 2009. Now traffic fatalities have been decreasing since automobiles became more heavily regulated, but government regulators aren’t satisfied with the current level. An official from the Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials was quoted as saying that zero deaths was the only thing that was acceptable. As such the government continues to roll out new regulations and mandates on auto manufacturers to push the fatality numbers even lower, such as more airbags, back-up cameras, etc. All of these costs are pushed onto the consumer.
Yet there is no government mandate to require all of us that aren’t contraindicated, to receive the flu vaccine, even though such measures would reduce the number of flu related deaths.
So why does the government tolerate death in one instance (letting individuals the freedom to choose whether or not they will be vaccinated for the flu) yet not another (mandating more and more regulatory requirements to reduce traffic fatalities). I’m sure I could come up with more examples for both sides, but I’m more concerned about the inconsistencies between the two practices.
Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on, a desire for more or less regulation from the government, the inconsistent application of the principle should bother you.
I’m not convinced these two things are comparable. In any event you can answer the question by looking at the costs and practicalities of reducing deaths in each situation.
Most school districts across the country have required vaccinations for attending public school. Being vaccinated has nothing to do with getting an education, that’s just the vehicle used to insure better public health policy.
Tying the mandatory flu vaccination to some other thing like voter registration, etc. could be a way of implenting it.
I don’t care to debate the factors of how it would be accomplished, rather that there is a distinction. There is a precedent for having mandatory medical procedures.
I would surmise that requiring all cars manufactured after a certain date to contain a back-up camera, is much more costly than requiring all registered voters or holders of a drivers licence to get a flu vaccine annually.
Yet we have one regulatory body (the various ones overseeing traffic safety) that believes there is an open check book on society, to get deaths to zero. And another the CDC, DHS, etc, that has a limited marketing budget to encourage flu vaccination.
Actually, there is a logical nexus between vaccination and public education, in that school is where childhood diseases get spread like wildfire in the absence of vaccines. This is not true of voter registration, especially in states like mine that have gone entirely to voting by mail anyway.
And the vast majority of states have religious and/or philosophical objection exemptions, anyway.
My point is why does the government pick certain places to focus its resources and arguably ignores others? Is it just the passion of certain members of congress, or agency heads? Historical momentum, i.e. once they were able to convince the populace that speed limits and seat belts were things that they had to live with, the rest just followed?
And now I get to introduce the term “cost-benefit analysis.” It’s not just about how expensive each one is, it’s about how much can be accomplished for that expense. Ultimately it’s about priorities.
The speaker was saying that ideally, there would be no deaths traffic accidents, and that they’re not going to quit just because traffic accident deaths hit some other benchmark. Nobody believes it’s actually possible to totally eliminate deaths from car crashes. It’s not possible to eliminate all deaths from the flu either - vaccines can be very effective, but they are not perfect.
There are a lot of answers to that, and you mentioned some. But a cost-benefit analysis is another.
Yet another is that certain interventions are considered to be so invasive that we don’t allow the government to mandate them, even “for everyone’s own good.” I’m very pro-vaccine, but I am against the government being able to chase you down and stick needles in you, and especially against tying it to a constitutional right like voting. (I don’t think there’s any constitutional requirement that states provide public education, although there is a requirement that they not be discriminatory in providing it once they have decided to do so.)
Vaccination raises issues of personal bodily autonomy that automobile safety devices do not. The fact that we may be willing to countenance invasion of that principle in children but not in adults does not strike me as unusual. Legally there are lots of ways in which we deem children to have less autonomy than adults.
Certainly, there are specialized circumstances where we invade the personal autonomy of adults. Screenings to board an airplane are one such. And if a disease were to develop that could kill a large group of people as quickly and inevitably as a bomb aboard an airplane, we might indeed see an outcry for mandatory vaccination against it.
What does this have to do with the OP? You are claiming that two regulations are in exactly the same moral circumstances, so one must support both or neither in order to be consistent. I showed how one can differentiate them.
If anything, you should expand your argument to include your above examples, not trying to narrow it down to just the two you mentioned.
They only have the capacity to manufacture so many doses of the vaccine a year. If all of a sudden everyone is getting them, we’d have to come up with some sort of prioritization/waiting period scheme.
Some hardcore vegans are ethically opposed to the vaccines because they’re made from an animal product (grown inside chicken eggs).
Marley seems to have come the closest to address my question. I’m not dismissing others comments, but they seem to be more focused on why vaccines are not good government policy, etc. Not really the point of the OP. There is plenty of historical precedent, that if the government wants to get into your health business, they can.
Now with regard to “cost benefit analysis”, Marley. Are you saying that saving a life from a traffic accident has a different benefit than saving a life from flu illness? If not, then the value of the benefits appear to comparable. So what is the marginal cost to save one additional life via automobile regulation vs. the marginal costs to save one additional life via flu vaccines?
You seem to be implying that somewhere in the bowels of some government agency there is some master planner and making sure that cost benefit analysis is being done so that we as a government are making sure that if the marginal costs is greater than $x,xxx,xxx then don’t do anything. I highly doubt that the folks at the CDC and DHS discuss regularly with people at the NHTSB.
So if the marginal costs of introducing additional regulations over automobile safety were greater than the marginal costs of increasing the Flu vaccination rate from 40% to 70%, assuming the same number of lives saved, then we should not introduce new auto regulations?
I think you need to break down the numbers by age, etc. Many who succumb to influenza and have that as their official cause of death are elderly/sick(terminal). How many people who died of influenza in 2010 would have died in 2010 of other causes if flu didn’t happen?
Are you saying that the life of someone that suffers from a breathing disorder that catches the flu and dies is worth less than a 60 year old retiree that steps in behind a person backing out of a parking space and is run over and killed?
Are you saying that someone who doesn’t catch the flu and lives another 2 years and then dies from another illness, is worth less than someone that is saved by a side impact airbag and lives another 30 years before dieing from breast cancer?
Or are you implying that most of the people that die from the flu were going to die anyway, so there’s really no need for vaccinations anyway? If that’s the case, we should probably stop the CDC and DHS from their annual campaigns to get more people vaccinated, because that’s money down the drain.
Is there any evidence that the vaccine actually does prevent flu or that it would, at least, prevent a significant number of deaths? I don’t follow the studies but it is my understanding that flu shot are just a mix of whatever viruses the manufacturers think might be around this season. They are not meant as a cure-all. Sure, vaccines are wonderful things but that doesn’t mean that every single vaccine that is brought to market is 100% effective and 100% safe 100% of the time. And they cost money.
The big difference for me is this. While my state mandates that I wear a seatbelt, they can’t MAKE me do it, they can only punish me if I don’t. With a vaccine, when they force me to take that shot there is no going back. Safe or not, it is in me and everyone else. I think vaccines should have a much higher testing requirement than seatbelt for example.
I’m saying that all those factors (as well as others) need to be considered before forcing someone to accept medical intervention they do not desire. That is all.
No, you make good points, that should be considered in the “cost benefit analysis” that Marley discusses. I just don’t believe that anyone in Washington does that. I believe that congressman, agency leaders, have pet projects that they are passionate about, and there is no consistent application of how we spend our tax money or how regulations are imposed that increase the cost on society.
As mentionned by shiftless, the government can’t force you to do something, they can punish you if you don’t do something though. In the case of automobile manufacturers, they’re fined. Would you propose something similar for people who avoid getting a shot?