I am well aware that people are going to die and there there’s a lot that’s out of our control.
But you also said:
So by your own admission, parents cannot “do their research” because there is nothing they can find out about their particular situation.
No one is being cruel by recognizing that some people will die and some will live. It’s reality in this fallen world.
But without any justification for why their child should be excused from vaccination, there is no reason why their child should be given special treatment. And if you are implying that nobody should be required to be vaccinated ever, well, that is just not something I would expect any RN to say. I can see delaying vaccination while the child is kept at home. But once a child starts mixing with children outside that family and in society in general, an obligation arises to protect the society in general, and that is when some sort of reasonable mandates are justified.
Unless there is specific information about their child that makes that child more at risk than other children generally, there is nothing to research, other than public policy. And we have public health officials to do that. If something thinks the public health policies are wrong for the public, there are ways to attempt to change public policy. What you are describing is not an individual decision because it affects more than the individual and his family.
Some vaccines have decades of history, their safety record is well known, and the potential consequences of skipping the vaccine are overwhelming.
What’s wrong with the picture as you have painted it is that it is a straw man. The reasonable “Vaxxer” (i.e. society) does not claim that if one person fails to get vaccinated the rest of the society will all get sick. It is a matter of risk. The risk goes up a little for each person who does not get vaccinated. This is OK as long as the number is vanishingly small. But when a sizeable number of people join the “anti-vaxxers”, the combined added risk becomes significant, as we have already is isolated outbreaks of measles among communities with strong views against vaccination. To use another analogy, it does not hurt the grocery store if one person shoplifts a single avocado. But when 200 people a day shoplift an avocado, it starts to hurt.
That may very well qualify for a medical exception. There are already provisions for that sort of thing. By the very nature of the situation, that number is almost certain to stay small so that granting those exceptions will not significantly harm the overall effort to combat the disease.
I don’t get this. Since the vaccine protects an individual from getting the disease, why can’t it be up to an individual if he wants a particular vaccine? Me deciding against it doesn’t hurt you in any way since you are vaccinated and therefore won’t catch the disease from me. How is there a danger to the community at large? Sounds like the only danger is to those who chose to take the risk.
I work in a lab, and we do the COVID-19 tests in our department (the rapid tests, done in one hour).
Because not getting the vaccine endangers others, because that individual goes out into society and mixes with others.
Only if the number of such cases is enough. If it is that dangerous then no kid should get the vaccine.
NY State is now mandating vaccines for conditions that are not contagious. The mandate formerly covered public schools, now Public and private schools. Eventually it will be extended to home schoolers.
What disease do you mean?
It was aimed at those who abused the privilege, and was a realization that the exemption was a bad idea to begin with.
You are forgetting about those who cannot take the vaccine because of a medical deficiency. These are not anti-vaxxers and they depend on the rest of us to keep them safe.
Yet you expect society to allow those same people who refuse vaccination to mix with the rest of us? To go to school with our kids? To spread disease to our kids? I absolutely cannot condone that.