I’m not that ready to hand over total control of anything to the government. The governments have this little habit of being given an inch and taking a mile.
All of them? Hep-B? A disease transmitted by sharing needles? How many newborns are sharing drug needles or engaging in non-traditional sex practices? Polio? Polio is transmitted through a fecal-oral route (IOW raw sewage in the water)? For all the talk about iron lungs and leg braces, we could stop polio vaccinations tomorrow with no impact on polio rates in the US because we have good sanitation and no longer dump bedpans and chamber pots in the streets. Both these vaccines have risks of adverse effects. Even if the risk is low, why take it when the risk of getting the disease is non-existent? Yes, if you’re planning on traveling to Africa or India, it would probably make sense to get vaccinated against polio, but not if you’re a newborn in the US. Most other first world countries have far smaller vaccine schedules than the US, with no impacts to childhood mortality or life expectancy.
Right. I happen to think the arguments against vaccinations are largely unfounded, but the idea of requiring people to get injections? That’s firmly in “Big Brother” territory. Even if I think people should get vaccinations, having people compelled to do so against their will is a frightening prospect.
I’m vaccinated. My children are vaccinated.
I work in a hospital and we were all required to get the flu shot as a basis of employment. These types of requirements do go on. Whatever concerns people have about vaccinations should be balanced with the fact that you will not really want yourself and your children to get many of these infectious diseases. Measles, Mumps, whooping cough, polio etc are serious.
Part of the problem is that we overvaccinate our kids. According to the CDC, 90% of people acquire full immunity after 1 MMR vaccination, but the CDC schedule calls for 2. Rather than exposing kids to unnecessary medical procedures, we could do a blood test for MMR antibodies to ensure immunity. This would also capture the kids that aren’t immunized by even 2 shots. This also ignores a lot of vaccines that make no sense for kids in the US, like Hep-B and polio.
Agreed.
Is your objection only to requiring vaccinations for those not yet sick, or to requiring treatment in general? For example, would you object if government required anyone with Ebola to submit to treatment? Or should a stubborn patient be allowed to remain untreated and mix in with society as he chooses?
I mostly agree with you, but only for those vaccines for which it is very clear that the risk of infection and the cost of getting infected are suitably high. I don’t think all vaccinations should be mandatory, and the list of ones that have been mandatory in the past days you refer to is quite small.
Big Brother wasn’t involved. Private entities and Public Schools are within their rights to require vaccines. No one is arguing that they aren’t.
This distinction between the schools requiring them and “Big Brother” forcing them is a non-issue. The OP cited Ben Carson’s remarks, which were about what schools should require. He did not propose any separate government coercion program that goes out and finds people without vaccinations and drags them into room 101 (Read 1984 if you don’t know the significance of room 101). Currently schools do offer religious and philosophical exemptions from their normal requirements. It is these exemptions that Dr. Carson was asking to stop.
I don’t really have a problem with place-specific or situation-specific requirements. If an individual has an objection to the vaccines, they can choose other options for them and their family (e.g. choose another profession other than the medical or teaching profession, choose to homeschool, etc.)
If a local school wants to require vaccines with no exemption, and that’s all, I am in total agreement.
