Vaccination
 

MOD EDIT: This thread split off from Bits & Pieces immediately after this post.

If only.

Okay. That was dumb.

When she brought up women drivers I thought that chick from the "Rapists are mean" comic he posted was about to barge in.

I get that people who refuse to take advantage of the information available, and want everything boiled down to simple answers are annoying. I get that. But what's even more annoying is the smarmy cunt who wrote that. I guarantee you the person that wrote that isn't a doctor, but is instead some acne faced fuck ass in University who thinks that he's just the cleverest cunt that ever did cunt, but hasn't actually met a person like this in real life. And once you get past the smarmy stupidity of it there is the underlying terror that this person believes that personal control should be taken away from people who don't conform to his world view.

It sucked a fat dick.

In case you didn't notice, that mother was about to deny her children vaccination without genuine medical reason. As far as I'm concerned that is a level of dangerous stupidity that invalidates her guardianship. Criminal negligence that is costing lives right now.

So choosing not to have your child injected with something that actually carries a small risk of causing death is criminal negligence, and reason to take control away from the parent? You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Hypothetically speaking, a kid could be naturally resistant to certain diseases anyway, to the point where the health risk of vaccination was higher than that of infection.

I don't think that speculation has anything to do with the argument.

BM argues that there should be consistent legal or social rules making vaccination mandatory. I argue that the potential number of exemptions from that rule makes it pointless to introduce.

But that's stupid. I'm allergic to penicillin, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a mandatory antibiotic.

What do you mean by mandatory? You mean to say that I have to put penicillin in my body, even if I choose not to? Should I be held down while it is forcefully injected into me?

I have no issue with putting rules in place that keep children who haven't been vaccinated from attending schools, or receiving other social benefits. If that's a law that the majority agrees on then I can see that as fair. But the moment you start telling people what they have to do with their body is the moment that I balk. This is very surprising from someone who has made so many recent blogs discussing a woman's right to make decisions about her own body. Surprising and hypocritical.

Mandatory was a very very bad word to use and I feel stupid.

I do agree with you about the 'article' but I disagree with MM's objection.

I didn't really think that's what you meant, but wanted to clarify.

Well, yes. If penicillin shots were mandatory, I'd be dead.

On second thoughts, this whole forced medication thing sounds like a great idea.

HA

It is when the alternative is a substantially increased risk of death not only for your own child but others as well. It is when it is flies in the face of all medical science. It is when you don't even know what the risks are either way because you refuse to learn them. It is when you fail so completely in fulfilling the most important responsibility as a parent, which is to do all you can to keep them safe, and your social responsibility as well. It is a myth that a parent must know what is best for their child. A parent is not ipso-facto an expert in parenting, as they should well know from all the interesting challenges and anguish they face on a daily basis. They may be the closest thing to an expert regarding the individual child, but that expertise does not extend to their immune system.

This is nonsense. This example isn't even about one's own body at all, but one's children's bodies. Here's where someone's beliefs, preferences and ignorance affect not their own health, but the health of other people. It's the same view I have of refusing your kid's life-saving blood transfusions because of your religious beliefs. Or neglecting to apply your kids with sunscreen. Or feeding them all fast food and junk. These are decisions that you are free to make for yourselves. Made for your kids? There is a word for that.

Abuse.

It is very simple. These decisions are not in the best interest of the child. They allow or directly cause harm. You can choose that for yourself, of course. A sub might enjoy being tied up and beaten and consent to that, but a child does not. You probably find this comparison to be ridiculous. I don't care. It is the same thing in my eyes. A kid with whooping cough is not any better off than a kid who has been beaten. Both end up with broken bones.

But with vaccination, you are not even only deciding the health of your own kid.

There are genuine reasons why an individual should not be vaccinated. They are rare and usually predictable, and a good parent knows if their kid falls into this category. They might be allergic to some component of the injection or have another health issue. Leukaemia, for example.

Such people are protected not by their own immunity but by that of those around them. Herd immunity. Which is a very fragile protection because only a small percentage of the population can be not vaccinated before chains of infection can form. We each encounter tens, hundreds and sometimes thousands of people every day, so a reduction in immunisation means that you can meet many people who have not been immunised. Suddenly those diseases can spread easily again, and they are today. Suppose a parent didn't vaccinate their kid and she became the last link in the chain that infected the leukaemia lad in her class with measles? Bad enough for an otherwise healthy kid, extraordinarily dangerous to an already weakened and immunocompromised one. That decision not to vaccinate could cost the life of someone else's kid via mechanisms that are very well understood. Does this still fall under the remit making decisions for your own body? Rhetorical. The correct answer is no.

Diseases that have become quite antiquated in the developed world are making a horrifying comeback, and people are already dying. Kids are dying. The choice not to vaccinate is not a neutral one that we cannot judge. It is the wrong choice, and it has hideous consequences. In the state of Washington, whooping cough is officially an epidemic. It is entirely preventable and this outrageous event is entirely the fault of fucking stupid parents who did not vaccinate and the dangerous morons who spread the misinformation that discourages vaccination. Why anyone would heed the likes of Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy ahead of doctors and scientists, I do not know. That may be a valuable social study.

But it is not a topic that we know little enough about to sit back and say "decide what's best for your family." It is already known what is best, and any parent serious about protecting their children should also know. All the resources are available, and it is the most important thing a parent will ever do.

Who ever said that the decision is a good one? No one. But that's not the issue. It's their decision to make whether you want it to be, or not. And no, it's not just about the children. Your piece of shit article was going to force the mother as well. And it is not a substantially increased chance of death. It just fucking isn't. But if it was then you could act like a reasonable human being, and lobby for legislation that keeps the children of such families from going to public schools, and taking part in other social programs. You know, like someone who doesn't think that 1985 is an example of a particularly awesome future.

Your 20 something know nothing ass doesn't get to force me to do anything with my goddamn child, and you can go fuck yourself for even considering it.

All that legislation does is punish vulnerable children while failing to protect them in any way. The parents make that decision on their behalf will have to live with it. The children may very well not.

We already have laws in place that remove children from the custody of the unfit. We already have laws to protect children from abusive parents. This is the same thing. I don't need to tell you what a responsibility kids are. Not vaccinating them is a complete failure of that responsibility.

Even when you are vaccinated, they usually have about a 90% success rate. It might not take for whatever reason, or an immune individual can be overwhelmed by infection if heavily exposed. For example, if everyone around them is sick. That's why outbreaks include the vaccinated, but the resistance provided by the vaccination limits that spread like a wall. A wall weakened by non-vaccinated persons, who tend to be the source anyway, often upon returning from foreign countries. They put everyone at risk.

And sure, segregating them might help, assuming you can segregate them everywhere, which you can't. And if you think segregation is less of a "rights" issue than having everyone vaccinated. And then those people will likely gather together, assemble non-vax schools so meet their kid's needs, because it is unreasonable to expect them all to be hermetically sealed all their lives. They already tend to cluster in communities because of the way these ideas spread. And then when an infection hits them, as it no doubt will at some point, the results will be devastating. And then maybe some of them will learn. Maybe. But that kind of lesson cannot come too early and always comes too late to be of any use.

This is a public health issue. PUBLIC. It affects everyone. So yes, I bloody well do get a say in whether other people vaccinate their children, as does everyone. And forgive me for not supporting a "right" to which I can point and say, "that's why those people died." That, so help me, I might one day point to and say, "that's why my daughter died." Fuck. That.

It is abuse. Nothing less. I will not stand for it.

How many of these people do you think there are? You think there are enough to start their own society with schools, and everything even without the help of government funding? I think probably not.

I'm not saying that it isn't an issue, and I'm not saying that the solution of disallowing them government funded social programs is a great solution, but it's the difference between an authoritarian fascist government removing personal rights from individuals without even being able to show legitimate harm, or hopefully causing the parents enough distress, and inconvenience that they conform to the societal standards. And therein lies the problem. Without the child getting sick you can not legitimately show harm, relegating your arguments to the land of the hypothetical, which will never stand up in any ethical court. Nor should it.

So basically we have to wait for their children to get sick with dangerous and entirely preventable diseases before we can talk about taking the necessary steps to prevent them from contracting the diseases that they have already got? This is not hypothetical, it is happening right now. Diseases that had been reduced to single figure cases are now booming in the hundreds and even thousands because of these retarded fuckwits playing dice with their children's health. And they are getting sick. I am tired of reading about outbreaks of antiquated diseases in schools.

This is a real thing and the science is in. Pertussis, measles, mumps, diphtheria, rubella. Pertussis is killing babies again, too young to be vaccinated yet, but who used to be protected by the barrier of immune people around them. Not any more. One family's unconscionable stupidity costs the life of a sensible family's child.

They're booming again now because their parents' generation got the vaccines. Because their parents lived in a time when these diseases were still prevalent and had seen what they do to people they knew and love. So they actually had the wits about them to take advantage of the miraculous preventatives provided by modern medicine, thus inadvertently creating a world where the unsubstantiated rants of daytime TV chat show guests are scarier than the actual fucking diseases making a comeback due to their own actions. Or lack thereof.

We already live in a world where the authorities step in when children are not being cared for properly, where they they are neglected even by well-meaning parents, or even abused. What I am saying is that this is both. And not just that, but their ignorant fuckery actually endangers the people around them too. Which might be solved by segregating them, though short of actual quarantine I doubt it. But even then, what I am hearing is an argument for the right of idiot parents to abuse their children. I say that they never had that right.

Yes. I understand. Ignorant people are irritating, and sometimes dangerous. But once again, removing parental, or personal rights based on stupidity, and hypothetical harm is an extremely dangerous direction to head in, and I will fight tooth, and nail to make sure that you don't get your way.

And you won't. Mainly because most people aren't short sighted enough to think the loss of personal control would stop there, and also because they understand that even if it did stop there it is still a violation of our basic human rights. You do not get to tell me what to do with my body.

That's some massive bits and pieces here

Well, what's up, people? Are we the only two that have an opinion on this?

I agree with BM.

and didn't really read the argument

At some point I'm going to have to bring Godwin's Law into this.

Quite possibly. You're the only parent here and BM has opinion on anything with the suffix "ology". Maybe everyone's waiting for a topic split.

I've already badly stated my opinion.

I could support BM in an epidemic situation. Vaccination or a prison/quarantine sentence until the all-clear is given. I know that's not how immunity works, and these people would just be bringing the germs back in, but I doubt people would stand for it otherwise.

It's not your body! That's my point! In the case of child vaccinations it is the child's body, not the parent who is making the decision. Even when it is not, you are putting everyone else at risk. We have laws about drinking and driving for the same reason. You have the right to do both but the law steps in when you try to do both. A violation of rights? Yes. If you had that right to begin with.

Your right to unnecessarily put yourself at risk of dangerous diseases ends where it puts my family at risk of dangerous diseases. Which is immediately. This isn't like smoking or drinking responsibly. There is no responsibly opting out of vaccinations except when there is a genuine medical condition such as those I've listed. It affects everyone which is why it is everyone's business.

Everyone else's right to live and be healthy trumps your right to be a dangerous fool.


If we all only ever got vaccinated at eighteen and were naturally immune to these diseases until that day, if vaccinations were always 100% effective and guaranteed perfect immunity, if everyone who wanted to be vaccinated was able to be vaccinated and if there was no possible way for your immune system to be compromised, then yes, you would be entirely within your right to turn vaccination down. It would be your choice for your own body and no one else would be affected. The "problem," such as it one, would be entirely self-correcting.

Unfortunately none of those things are true. No one gets to decide for themselves if they receive their childhood vaccinations. Very young children are vulnerable until they get their vaccinations. Some people who are vaccinated do not properly develop immunity to that particular disease. Some people cannot be vaccinated, and others have conditions that compromise their immune system. All these people are not protected by their own immunity but are protected by the immunity of everyone else, who cannot transmit those diseases to them. Only when a sufficiently high percentage of the population is immune is this protection effective.

Refusing to vaccinate your children compromises this protection. All those vulnerable people become susceptible to infection again. Some of them will be infected as a result. And some of the infected will die. And they do.

You don't get to expedite that outcome. You don't have the right.

I could use the exact same argument against abortion.

That has nothing to do with this, but I wanted to say it anyway.