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Should Governments Do More to Counter the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Should Governments Do More to Counter the Anti-Vaccine Movement?

  • Total voters
    44
I don't believe a parent should be forced to vaccinate their children...with that said....these same parents should not be allowed to send thier unvaccinated children to daycares and public schools without proof of vaccination.
 
PirateMk1 said:
We used a vaccine specialist, several actually in developing our children programs. I trust them before you. They ran tests before and after and made sure things were going as they predicted. Well worth the money we spent. Vaccine specialists also design the vaccine regimens your pets and cattle use. Dead cattle dont bring home the bacon.
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Sounds like you got taken for a ride.
 
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Yeah, form "leper colonies" where all the unvaccinated idiots can live and all share their diseases without threatening those who have been vaccinated
 
PirateMk1 said:
No. Vaccines are fine in principle but parents should be willing and able to refuse those that they think unnecessary and to be able to get alternative formulations that do not have heavy metals formaldehydes exedra to minimize risks. I do not oppose vaccination I do oppose unnecessary and one size fits all programs especially when said programs accelerate and compact schedules unduly and push more vaccines than necessary. A slow methodical program that makes sure the immune system has recovered sufficiently to continue vaccinating is prefered. This is done though testing and observation. A specialist working with the parents would be a best case scenario especially if they can formulate custom vaccine programs and formulations. We do this for animals we sure as hell can do it for our children.

Further many vaccines do not have and are not required to have as extensive medical trials as medications and therefor are not nearly as well tested or known as most medications.

Parents should be fully informed of all risks associated with vaccines both pro and con and allowed to make the decision on their own. Most parents will likely choose to vaccinate, more over if completely informed will do so conservatively to cover those diseases that are debilitating and little else.
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Vaccines are the most effective medical treatment of all time. Far more than any drug. Diseases that killed so many no longer do thanks to vaccines.

they are even the most widely used, the most safest. Nothing is ever 100% safe in 100% of people. Even foods like peanuts can kill people, does that mean peanuts aren't safe?
 
Carjosse said:
In light of events like a measles outbreak in Washington state or the EU. Do you think that governments need to start doing more to counter the anti-vaccination movement and their pseudoscience lies? If so, what measures do you think they should take: legislation, more fact-based myth-debunking awareness campaigns, or fear and shock based campaigns like anti-smoking ads, more then one? If not, why not?

I think they need all three, use legislation to eliminate exemptions (should be all but medical) though that may be difficult so in the mean time launch campaigns from both angles, fact-based to debunk myths, and fear to provide a much stronger emotional push to vaccinate. This opinion piece from the CBC highlights why a fear campaign to encourage vaccination would work. Have pamphlets, commercials, whatever showing children suffering or dead from these diseases, show them what happens when you do not vaccinate.
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I voted no and here is why. Most states require children to have up to date vaccination records in order to attend licensed daycare, pre-school, kindergarten, private and public elementary through high school. Everything from measles, mumps, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, chicken pox, whooping cough etc.

The overwhelming majority of children in this country are vaccinated. This recent outbreak of measles in the Pacific Northwest where parents seem to operate under laws that are much more loose than most when it comes to vaccinating their children. There are a dozen or so states that have more lenient rules to certain degrees but the majority of states already have pretty strong laws in place. Now there is always going to be a small group here and there that for philosophical reasons will refuse vaccinations and there is really nothing one can do to force them to vaccinate their kids. Other than in the Northwest region mainly Washington, the two prior outbreaks were in a Somalian community in Minnesota and a Jewish community in Brooklyn. All three have reported well below 100 cases. Considering how contagious measles are, those numbers are not bad. While it is a concern to see these outbreaks occur after measles have been pretty much wiped out the last 20 years, it's a reminder that the disease is still active and your children need protected.
 
PirateMk1 said:
I dont agree. Its not child endangerment or endangerment of others. Diseases exist outside just my child and your child they are for all intents and purposes, everywhere, in literally every breath you take. All inoculation does is help to prevent a few from amongst however many exist from possibly being spread, they are not infallible.
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Except these ones are entirely preventable based on your decision, if you choose not to vaccinate you are negligent. Should workplace safety be optional as well and left up to employers because technically workers could be hurt by anything?
 
vesper said:
I voted no and here is why. Most states require children to have up to date vaccination records in order to attend licensed daycare, pre-school, kindergarten, private and public elementary through high school. Everything from measles, mumps, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, chicken pox, whooping cough etc.

The overwhelming majority of children in this country are vaccinated. This recent outbreak of measles in the Pacific Northwest where parents seem to operate under laws that are much more loose than most when it comes to vaccinating their children. There are a dozen or so states that have more lenient rules to certain degrees but the majority of states already have pretty strong laws in place. Now there is always going to be a small group here and there that for philosophical reasons will refuse vaccinations and there is really nothing one can do to force them to vaccinate their kids. Other than in the Northwest region mainly Washington, the two prior outbreaks were in a Somalian community in Minnesota and a Jewish community in Brooklyn. All three have reported well below 100 cases. Considering how contagious measles are, those numbers are not bad. While it is a concern to see these outbreaks occur after measles have been pretty much wiped out the last 20 years, it's a reminder that the disease is still active and your children need protected.
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The problem is a lot of states have exemptions to those laws, usually for religious but sometimes just philosophical reasons, that is where the problems rise and these cases always occur where exemptions are high. The only exemption for vaccines should be medical, and just banning them from attending school doe not accomplish anything when they can just as easily home school and expose the community elsewhere.
 
No one has the right to be a highly contagious vector to a completely preventable disease.
 
Sampson Simpson said:
Vaccines are the most effective medical treatment of all time. Far more than any drug. Diseases that killed so many no longer do thanks to vaccines.

they are even the most widely used, the most safest. Nothing is ever 100% safe in 100% of people. Even foods like peanuts can kill people, does that mean peanuts aren't safe?
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I dont disagree with you in what you just wrote. That said I dont begrudge a parent making decision contradictory to what you or I made. Vaccines are not one hundred percent safe or effective. When you take a vaccine you are encumbering risk. Its a wise thing to first examine the issue and consider the consequences, ALL the consequences.

By the way peanuts are definitely NOT safe if you an allergy to them.
 
Carjosse said:
Except these ones are entirely preventable based on your decision, if you choose not to vaccinate you are negligent. Should workplace safety be optional as well and left up to employers because technically workers could be hurt by anything?
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Thats were you are wrong. They are not entirely preventable. If you are inoculated and I am not does not mean you will not get the disease, and I will. I know because I had the shots for chicken pox and got them anyhow when I was 18. Let me tell you that ****ing sucked, we were basically invalids for about a week. Four out of six in my family got chicken pox even though we were vaccinated against it. Workplace safety and inoculations are two completely different things. The chicken pox incident is what makes me cautious about vaccines, and public transportation.
 
DiAnna said:
I had measles as a kid; I nearly died, and although I recovered, the disease had permanently affected my eyesight. Parents who do not vaccinate their children are playing Russian Roulette with their lives; they should not be allowed to play Russian Roulette the the lives of other peoples' children.
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Me too. It affected my eye sight and my hearing. 105 degree measles fever is real.
 
PirateMk1 said:
Thats were you are wrong. They are not entirely preventable. If you are inoculated and I am not does not mean you will not get the disease, and I will. I know because I had the shots for chicken pox and got them anyhow when I was 18. Let me tell you that ****ing sucked, we were basically invalids for about a week. Four out of six in my family got chicken pox even though we were vaccinated against it. Workplace safety and inoculations are two completely different things. The chicken pox incident is what makes me cautious about vaccines, and public transportation.
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You are applying the same logic. Just because you had a bad experience with chicken pox means that society should just have to live with measles outbreaks? Just because you chicken pox vaccine was ineffective all vaccines must be ineffective?
 
DiAnna said:
I had measles as a kid; I nearly died, and although I recovered, the disease had permanently affected my eyesight. Parents who do not vaccinate their children are playing Russian Roulette with their lives; they should not be allowed to play Russian Roulette the the lives of other peoples' children.
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I agree with you that vaccination is important, I'm just not sure what the government is able to do about it that won't cause kids more harm than good.

Let's take one of the more common proposals I hear for example, not letting children go to school without vaccinations. Most of the parents I know who don't vaccinate are also the type that, faced with that choice, would continue not to vaccinate and homeschool their kids. So now the child still isn't vaccinated, and they're at risk of getting a worse education.

Or let's go all the way with it. Let's consider not vaccinating child endangerment and worthy of having your kids taken away. There too I'm not sure the benefit outweighs the harm. Being taken away from parents is incredibly traumatic for a child. And the risks of being unvaccinated, while real, are pretty small.

As far as things like education campaigns and PSAs go, I don't think those are harmful, I just think they're useless. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
 
I am unsure why anyone has the choice to be honest. In past epidemics, the general population were forced to get vaccines regardless of their wishes.
 
Superfly said:
Through legislation. Can't expect people to do the right thing, obviously - even when it comes to their kids.
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So, we should consider you not pro-choice? It's OK to coerce vaccines, but not birth, right?
 
PirateMk1 said:
I dont disagree with you in what you just wrote. That said I dont begrudge a parent making decision contradictory to what you or I made. Vaccines are not one hundred percent safe or effective. When you take a vaccine you are encumbering risk. Its a wise thing to first examine the issue and consider the consequences, ALL the consequences.

By the way peanuts are definitely NOT safe if you an allergy to them.
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My biggest problem with the anti-vaxxers is they're engaged in a pretty deplorable type of freeloading. What makes their decision to not vaccinate FAR less risky is 95% of so of other kids bear the very small risk of vaccines. The "herd immunity" you mistakenly called a "side benefit" in an earlier post (it's a critical element that makes a vaccine program work at all) protects them. Were it not for all the others who did get vaccinated, these little pockets of outbreaks would spread nationwide, like the flu does every year, and the risks of their kids getting the disease would skyrocket. So they're offloading the risk onto others, which is rational for a given person but society doesn't have to tolerate it.

But it doesn't end there. If it was just the kids of anti-vaxxers at risk, OK to some extent, but many kids cannot get vaccines for various reasons, and in those who do get a vaccine there is a small failure rate, so their decisions in fact increase the risk of harm of a preventable disease on people who DO accept the risk of vaccines.

So they're 1) freeloaders who 2) increase the risks for those who ARE responsible. It's a twofer of irresponsible.
 
Anti-Vaxxers are just dangerous.
 
They need to do what California did and eliminate personal and religious exemptions. To be exempt, you need a medical doctor to sign off, saying it is medically dangerous to receive the vaccination. Otherwise, you get it, no matter what your parents believe or think.
 
JasperL said:
My biggest problem with the anti-vaxxers is they're engaged in a pretty deplorable type of freeloading. What makes their decision to not vaccinate FAR less risky is 95% of so of other kids bear the very small risk of vaccines. The "herd immunity" you mistakenly called a "side benefit" in an earlier post (it's a critical element that makes a vaccine program work at all) protects them. Were it not for all the others who did get vaccinated, these little pockets of outbreaks would spread nationwide, like the flu does every year, and the risks of their kids getting the disease would skyrocket. So they're offloading the risk onto others, which is rational for a given person but society doesn't have to tolerate it.

But it doesn't end there. If it was just the kids of anti-vaxxers at risk, OK to some extent, but many kids cannot get vaccines for various reasons, and in those who do get a vaccine there is a small failure rate, so their decisions in fact increase the risk of harm of a preventable disease on people who DO accept the risk of vaccines.

So they're 1) freeloaders who 2) increase the risks for those who ARE responsible. It's a twofer of irresponsible.
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I dont consider what they are doing deplorable, nor irresponsible, their ONLY responsibility is to themselves. Period. They owe you or me nothing. They effect nobody, but themselves. The diseases are in the wild they are out there and somebody somewhere, inoculated or not will be carrying them hence why we have inoculations in the first place even though we have reduced dramatically many diseases. Some to the point we dont really need the inoculations. That said many of us get them anyhow. The point of inoculation is not reduce the effects or to not get a given disease. Herd immunity is a simply a side benefit when most people are inoculated. We live in a free country were people are free to make their own decisions unless they can be plainly shown to be a clear and present danger to others. Someone who is not inoculated does not fit that description.
 
straykatz said:
I don't believe a parent should be forced to vaccinate their children...with that said....these same parents should not be allowed to send thier unvaccinated children to daycares and public schools without proof of vaccination.
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Why would you allow parents to refuse life saving vaccinations? Not only are they harming their own children but endangering the lives of anyone else in contact with them.
 
Vadinho said:
Why would you allow parents to refuse life saving vaccinations? Not only are they harming their own children but endangering the lives of anyone else in contact with them.
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Mostly because the parents are either misinformed, ignorant, or have imaginary friends. You know... stupid people.
 
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