Vaccinating children - choice by parent or state?

[Berzerker]

Education > law

Choice > mandate

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I want you to point to one post in this thread where I said bad parenting should be criminalized. It's okay, I'll wait....

A parent refusing to vaccinate their child is completely outside of the child's control, and as such is nothing more than an egregious affront to the health, well-being, and civil rights of the child. If that doesn't deserve some jail time, I don't know what does.

Just for you. Something you have defined as 'bad parenting' that you say merits jail time.

So, I believe that early instruction in religion distorts logical thinking and inhibits the child, handicapping them throughout their life. Do I get to say that that bit of 'bad parenting' should merit jail time?

How about letting children watch too much television? Jail time?

Let's round up the parents of fat kids while we are at it. Clearly a little time on bread and water is merited there.

 

[Arwon]

Not vaccinating your child does not create an obvious, immediate harm that justifies the state coming in to throw you in jail. Yes, not vaccinating a child does put the child at risk, but being at risk is different from having been harmed. Failing to vaccinate your child creates the potential for a possible harm in the future. It is distinguishable from abusing one's child as there's no contemporaneous harm present.

What's more, the likelihood that the potential harm will actually manifest is low relative to other risk taking behaviors. That distinguishes it from drunk driving which more likely to result in an actual harm to someone.

It also causes risk to other people's children and forces changed lifestyles on other parents. Children who cannot be vaccinated due to immunodeficiency (one cause of this is chemotherapy) or allergy rely on a high enough rate of vaccinations sustaining herd immunity for them. This is the bit that is especially heinous and compels us to make vaccinations compulsory for attending school.

Measles kill half of infected immunodeficient children. To allow unvaccinated children to attend schools is to force the parents of immunodeficient or allergic children or those recieving chemotherapy to make lifestyle changes to avoid other people threatening their children.

 

[illram]

Education > law

Choice > mandate

Some of the places with the highest rates of "personal belief exemptions" are highly educated and affluent areas.

The driver of this problem is (a) at risk populations who simply lack adequate access to health care, preventative treatment, or health education and (b) highly educated, mostly white, affluent communities full of rich, entitled hippy dippy crunchy types who think nothing bad can happen to their little angel as long as they just give them organic roots and berries and essential oils. I know this because I am surrounded by them. (E.g. Marin and Sonoma Counties here in CA, some of the worst offenders.) Rich, entitled, "educated," and confidently ignorant. The worst combination. Read this NY Times article and tell me it does not make you want to reach through the page and shake some sense into some of these people.

In San Geronimo, Calif., a mostly rural community of rolling hills and oak trees about 30 miles north of San Francisco, 40 percent of the students walking into Lagunitas Elementary School have not been inoculated against measles, according to the school’s figures. Twenty-five percent have not been vaccinated for polio. In all, the state says that 58 percent of Lagunitas kindergartners do not have up-to-date vaccine records.

“A lot of people here have personal beliefs that are faith based,” said John Carroll, the school superintendent, who sent a letter home to parents last week encouraging them to vaccinate their children. The faith, Mr. Carroll said, is not so much religious as it is a belief that “they raise their children in a natural, organic environment” and are suspicious of pharmaceutical companies and big business.

Some parents forgo shots altogether. Others split vaccine doses or stretch out their timeline, worried about somehow overwhelming their children’s immune system. Kelly McMenimen, a Lagunitas parent, said she “meditated on it a lot” before deciding not to vaccinate her son Tobias, 8, against even “deadly or deforming diseases.” She said she did not want “so many toxins” entering the slender body of a bright-eyed boy who loves math and geography.

Going back to my two categories of people who do not have adequate vaccines...People in category (a) need better access to basic services, education, etc. etc. as they are not making the choice to forego vaccines, they simply lack the time and resources or knowledge to follow the regimen. Punitive measures are not going to help them get access to the vaccines their children need, as they are not really making the conscious choice to forego the vaccine, they're just not getting it done because real life is getting in the way. People in (b) on the other hand, like Ms. McMenimen who "meditated on it alot" before deciding to turn her child into a walking public health hazard should know better and need a firmer push in the right direction.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

After researching the issue and reading information from a national anti-vaccine group, Ms. McDonald said she and her husband, a chiropractor, decided to raise their four children without vaccines. She said they ate well and had never been to the doctor, and she insisted that her daughter was healthier than many classmates. But when the school sent her home with a letter, Ms. McDonald’s daughter was so concerned about missing two weeks of Advanced Placement classes that she suggested simply getting a measles inoculation.

“I said, ‘No, absolutely not,’ “ Ms. McDonald said. “I said, ‘I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot.’ “

Okay, this woman is definitely a child abuser. This is absolute insanity. She deserves to have her children removed from her custody, because she is one seriously twisted, definitely unfit parent.

Missy Foster, 43, said she had not vaccinated her daughter, Tully, who is now 18 months old, against measles because of concern that the M.M.R. vaccine — which stands for measles, mumps and rubella, or German measles — might be associated with autism.

“It’s the worst shot,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “Do you want to wake up one morning and the light is gone from her eyes with autism or something?”

So she'd rather her daughter have a miscarriage if she were to contract German measles while pregnant or suffer other reproductive complications if she were to suffer this disease as an adult (ie. any time during her late teens and onward)?

At least she finally saw sense and let her daughter have the vaccine. But this is outrageous.

Members of the anti-vaccine movement said the public backlash had terrified many parents. “People are now afraid they’re going to be jailed,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a clearinghouse for resisters. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. It’s gotten so out of hand, and it’s gotten so vicious.”

They should be. They should have their custody rights terminated. Unless the kid is verified to be allergic to the vaccine or there is some other potentially fatal medical reason to avoid the vaccine, there is NO excuse not to have this done.


And it's not always the kids' lack of vaccinations that are the problem. My dad used to bring home colds and the flu and pass them along to me because he simply would not observe common courtesy and common sense about handwashing, nose-blowing, avoiding sneezing all over the stuff everyone touches like doorknobs and the TV remote, and above all, when he's sick, just damn well stay in bed!

After he turned 65, I told him that he was coming with me to get his annual flu shot. No excuses whatsoever. I told him that since he was now a senior citizen it would be free of charge and I'd pay the taxi fare to get us to and from the clinic. I was tired of getting sick every year, and with his lifelong smoking habit, one bad flu could land him in the hospital or kill him. So he went, and he's had his shot every year. It's ridiculous that every year I have to sign a permission slip for him to get his shot at the nursing home - you'd think it would be mandatory in a place like that. But it isn't, so there's this bureaucratic nonsense. But at least as his guardian I'm entitled to get my shot at the same time, so now we make it an annual get-together. Sure, a week of a sore arm and a bit of weakness follows, but that's way better than the flu.

 

[illram]

I am definitely not advocating imprisonment or child protective services intervention, but definitely far more blunt ways to "nudge" parents, like a Cass Sunstein economic policy on steroids, in the right direction.

No Whole Foods for your unvaccinated family!

 

[Berzerker]

Some of the places with the highest rates of "personal belief exemptions" are highly educated and affluent areas.

Are they educated about vaccines? No, so why count them as educated?

 

[illram]

They are. These are college educated, sometimes graduate degree level folks with doctors who plead with them to get vaccinated and healthcare and all the rest. If you have gone to college you were at some point provided with an at least rudimentary overview of vaccines and disease immunity. That is like freshman level Biology, isn't it? (Or even high school level biology, really. Been a little while for me.)

Instead, they listen to Jenny McCarthy and other quacks that reinforce their predispositions. Intentional ignorance.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The State should force anyone to get a vaccine.

Public schools should mandate vaccines for those who choose to attend, allowing exceptions for those with genuine medical reasons but none based on the parent's personal beliefs.

(We should not have compulsory attendance for anyone though.

I prefer optional educational vouchers tied to the individuals, and not merely for minors, sufficient to cover at least as much education would be necessary to reach the levels of education required to pass the tests which I would make prerequisites for opting to sign the contract which I would make a prerequisite for citizenship and the associated privileges such as voting. It is wrong to grant anyone different legal rights based on happenstance of birth, whether going by jus sanquinis or jus solis.

I'd really like a Basic Income better than school vouchers though, as the things which poor families cannot afford which put their children at education disadvantages are not limited to the direct costs of schooling.)

If parents really oppose vaccinations, they can educate their kids at home either personally or through an on-line school.

I would highly recommend that private schools require similar proof of immunizations, although I would not legally mandate it. The same goes for other other institutions where young children might congregate, including day cares, amusement parks, airplanes, etc.

I would consider withholding school vouchers and/or basic income payments from those parents who rejected vaccinations.


I would also allow the administration of vaccines even without parental consent to those children who actually request them. (I assume those would be far more teens than toddlers.)

 

[Berzerker]

They are. These are college educated, sometimes graduate degree level folks with doctors who plead with them to get vaccinated and healthcare and all the rest. If you have gone to college you were at some point provided with an at least rudimentary overview of vaccines and disease immunity. That is like freshman level Biology, isn't it? (Or even high school level biology, really. Been a little while for me.)

Instead, they listen to Jenny McCarthy and other quacks that reinforce their predispositions. Intentional ignorance.

If they're ignorant they aint educated

 

[bhavv]

You would be surprised how easy a lot of college courses are.

If I got a Biology degree, anyone can. Just parrot fashion memorize all those microbiologic pathways and done.

 

[Kyriakos]

It seems logical that every time people are asked (or forced/pestered etc) to present their view on an issue which they are unlikely to have first hand or deep knowledge about, such as medicine and in particular vaccines, the popularised debate shall amount to little other than trolling and idiocy from either side.
It is not like we will hear elaborately backed scientific information, cause the scope of the discussion does not allow for that or its checking to a sufficient degree. So it seems pretty suspect from the start to have media act as hosts of such discussion. They always provide a circus show instead.

As noted, it is so for the global warming debate as well. Imagine if the same media clowns were saying stuff like "lol, you can't not use the Riemann hypothesis when dealing with the twin prime conjecture, that is just dark-age anti-literacy garbage".
That they deal with more vague but more soundbyte-friendly scientific issues makes their tone or contribution really no better.

 

[illram]

If they're ignorant they aint educated

I'm really just using it as demographic shorthand. "Highly educated," i.e. college degree or above, with the social privileges and economic benefits that usually entails. Anyways, they are getting educated. They have doctors who are telling them to vaccinate, etc. They are ignoring the science for whatever reason. Telling them they're wrong is not working.

 

[Berzerker]

if in nature predators maintain the health and viability of the herd by taking the weak, dont vaccines have the opposite effect?

what happens when the over-vaccinated herd runs into an evolved predator created by medicine?

a major outbreak far worse than what nature produced

 

[Arwon]

Clearly we must let tigers eat our runtish young!

(If we're relying on letting people die of measles to improve humanity something has gone seriously seriously wrong)

 

[Arwon]

Also Berserkles you realise 50% of kids in chemotherapy (a lot of immunodeficient kids are immunodeficient because of undergoing cancer treatments) who get measles die from the disease, yes? You are literally saying we shouldn't bother trying quite so hard to save kids with cancer from death.

 

[Berzerker]

Clearly we must let tigers eat our runtish young!

If a tiger is chasing our kids, I sure hope mine is faster than yours. And if he is and your runt gets eaten the herd is strengthened nonetheless. How is the herd strengthened if we remove the tiger until slow runts increase in number?

(If we're relying on letting people die of measles to improve humanity something has gone seriously seriously wrong)

If we're relying on that the vaccine program backfired and we created a superbug and it may be too late.

Also Berserkles

you realise 50% of kids in chemotherapy (a lot of immunodeficient kids are immunodeficient because of undergoing cancer treatments) who get measles die from the disease, yes? You are literally saying we shouldn't bother trying quite so hard to save kids with cancer from death.

Aint my decision, but do they give at risk kids vaccinations?

We were discussing herd immunity? You've taken up the violin instead.

How do vaccines protect the herd? By limiting outbreaks. What happens when the bug outsmarts our vaccine? A much larger percent of the population gets sick. Maybe enough to nearly wipe us out. How might that bug outsmart our vaccine? Because we're spreading it around like anti-biotics in the beef industry.

Yeah, I aint so sure vaccines protect the herd. Nature has been doing that far longer than the men in white coats. But we haven't evolved to combat the bugs produced by our labs and medicines.

 

[Arwon]

The measles vaccine leads to supermeasles. Right. I think you've invented an entirely novel form of unscientific woo there mate.

Probably wanna submit that one to the journals champ, you'll be an academic star if you can back it up.

 

[Bugfatty300]

If a tiger is chasing our kids, I sure hope mine is faster than yours. And if he is and your runt gets eaten the herd is strengthened nonetheless. How is the herd strengthened if we remove the tiger until slow runts increase in number?

Hmm. So school massacres are actually beneficial.

 

[Senethro]

This thread has become silly.