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Mutant Registration vs. Vaccine Registration
Responding to an editorial endorsing a national vaccine registry in Canada (though the same kind of registry could be and has been proposed in the U.S. with the same logic), an anonymous reader writes "Vaccine Registration makes me think of Mutant and Superhero registration. The reasons are similar. It's based on fear and misinformation. People fear that unvaccinated people will doom us all. Sound familiar? The difference is this is real. (Oh, and they probably won't use sentinels to track down the dangerous unvaccinated folks.) Thoughts?"
From the linked editorial: "A national vaccination registry would identify which Canadians have been fully vaccinated, those who have received less than a full dose of shots, and those who have not been vaccinated at all. Having a vaccine registry in place in the event of an outbreak of measles, whooping cough, and diseases like these would enable public health officials to identify the children and adults who need vaccinations. Getting them the shots they need would reduce the risk of anyone on the list getting sick, and would also reduce the threat of an outbreak in the community in which they live or travel to [and] from."
In the U.S., immunization records — at least, ones which have been put in electronic form at all — are maintained in a mix of databases, including at the state level, or maintained by cities, or by insurance companies and medical providers. Here, some people (like the reader who submitted this story) also see a potential for unwarranted privacy invasion in a national vaccination registry; however, their case isn't helped by often being tied to opposition to vaccination more generally.
Well except mutants aren't real and can't doom us all whereas unvaccinated people can.
Look, if you're a luddite and have chosen to not be vaccinated against infectious diseases, you are a public health risk.
If I or my children get sick due to contact with you, I want legal recourse against you.
If you are un-immunized, you really have no business going into places like hospitals where you will put the lives of others at risk.
If you solely bore the risk of not being immunized, and only you and your family might become ill -- well, good for you, you'll take yourself out of the gene pool and do us all a favor.
But, if you're a moron who hasn't vaccinated your children because you've been listening to Jenny McCarthy, I don't want you or your children anywhere me or my family.
You want to be a plague carrier? Fine, but you can't go into public.
Diseases which had been mostly eradicated which are suddenly making a resurgence are entirely due to idiots who think the vaccine is going to give them another disease. You're entitled to your stupid beliefs, but you are not entitled to spread disease.
If you choose to exercise your right to not be immunized, you give up some of your rights as far as you could infect others.
The reasons are similar. It's based on fear and misinformation
No, it's based on facts. It's the anti-vaxxers who operate based on misinformation.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
A Vancouver father is calling on parents to vaccinate their children for chickenpox after his son nearly died from the disease while his immune system was compromised during chemotherapy.
Jason Lawson's 10-year-old son Beckett has been in and out of hospital for most of his life for cancer treatment, but Lawson says one of the scariest moments came when the boy caught chickenpox from a classmate at school.
Sure, the fundamentals are similar - building a list of people who are threats to the health of the rest of the population.
But, while super/mutant power are generally something innate and unselected, not getting vaccinated is, by and large, a choice.
If you are making a choice to ignore what science has earned human society, and that choice is putting other people at risk, get on the list.
Additionally, if I could not get vaccinated against something for some specific medical reason, I'd want to be on a list to be notified in case of an outbreak, so that I could lock myself away until it passed.
Go for a little walk, breathe some fresh air.
#DeleteChrome
Except when what can make you sick, can make others sick or even kill them.
If you want the ability to walk around un-immunized and risk your life, maybe you should have to accept civil and criminal liability in the event someone else gets sick.
Because if you being un-immunized causes people to die, and you knew that was a possibility, well, sounds like manslaughter to me.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
How did this get on the front page? Comparing vaccination registrations with mutant registration? A remotely educated person would have at least tried to compare it to the real-life events that inspired the idea of "mutant registration", which were the treatment of Jews in Europe and of the Japanese in the US during WW2.
And this:
It's based on fear and misinformation. People fear that unvaccinated people will doom us all. Sound familiar? The difference is this is real. (Oh, and they probably won't use sentinels to track down the dangerous unvaccinated folks.)
Is this a joke? Is the suggestion that they won't use sentinels sarcastic?
And it's not "fear based on misinformation", it's fear based in real risk. When large numbers of people refuse to get vaccinated from serious infectious diseases, they're putting everyone else in the population at greater risk of infection.
Wow
Slashdot you really need add a +1 crazy to the moderation levels.
Someone might actually enjoy reading the nut jobs on Slashdot.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm trying to keep track of what kind of registries are acceptable for each (US) political party
No Fly Registry: It's Our Patriotic Duty (D&R)
Gun Owner Registry: Acceptable for (D), Unacceptable for (R)
Legal-to-work-in-US Registry: Acceptable for (R), Unacceptable for (D)
National ID card: Acceptable for (D), Unacceptable for (R)
Vaccination Registry: Acceptable for (D), Unacceptable for (R)
Superhero Registry: It's Our Patriotic Duty
Mutant Registry: Ditto
Windows Registry: Can't run Windows without it, and what else would you run?
" which were the treatment of Jews in Europe and of the Japanese in the US during WW2"
Talk about two vastly different levels.
The treatment of Americans of Japanese descent in the US was shameful.
The the treatment of the Jews by Nazi Germany was a Holocaust.
The sad thing is that treatment of Americans of Japanese descent has become so politicised that much of the history about it has been rewritten and many of the triggers are not taught because of fear that people will be accused of trying to justify it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The government has NO RIGHT to know what will and won't make me sick.
On the contrary, the government has every right to assure you are vaccinated. Your ignorant and paranoid refusal to be vaccinated threatens the health of others. The threat you pose if you are not vaccinated is not some misguided rant of a paranoid, but a real and present medical danger.
.
If you do not want to get vaccinated, then go live in complete isolation, far, far away from those who want their children to be healthy. The moment you choose to interact with society, then you have a responsibility not to make that society sick.
It would be an invasion of privacy, sure. I mean, if this were any other sort of medical records, we probably wouldn't care at all. I mean, if anyone proposed a national registry of "broke their leg skiing" or "genetically predisposed to be an alcoholic", we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Actually, I fear my genetic information being available. Can you imagine a society similar to Gattaca? Car insurance company sees you're predisposed to be an alcoholic, so they charge you higher premiums, even though you don't drink. Health insurance company raises your rates because you're predisposed for some condition.
People with HIV who have had deliberately had sex with people have been charged with attempted murder and for good reason too.
The problem is that parents are making decisions for just their own children. Their children can make other vaccinated kids or immuno-comprimised sick, where if they hadn't those kids wouldn't of. So the parents are making a decision which effects the well being of more than their children. Now how do you hold them accountable or liable for taking a risk with other peoples children, that's an interesting ethical question.
As far as your article goes, that information was based on a 8,000 responses on an anonymous web survey done by a homeopathic quack with no test controls and biased wording. It's about as far from science as you can go.
http://scienceblogs.com/insole...
Whats that? My idea is insensitive and wrong, but yours is ok?
Yes. My neighbor's HIV/AIDS status is none of my business because I don't have sex with my neighbor. My neighbor's abortion history is none of my business because abortions are not contagious. But my neighbor's vaccination record for measles and polio IS my business because those are contagious diseases that can spread through a community.
You won't get HIV/AIDS by casual contact with someone. You might get one of these things not being vaccinated.
You say killed, I say removed unwanted tissue growth.
Possibly something your mother should have done.
As a Canadian I'm shocked that the government doesn't already do this. I alway just assumed that when I went to the hospital the medical staff could look up what shots I've had, what I'm allergic to, and any major surgeries I've undergone.
As a side note. I think this a good idea. I sure as shit don't want someone who isn't vacinated wandering around a hospital war full of people who's immune system is compromised.
This is the most insane, paranoid thing I've ever seen posted on Slashdot. And that's saying a lot.
The same virus that cause chicken pox in kids will lurk in your body for decades and can come back and give you Shingles. For seniors it can cause nerve damage and crippling pain, even blindness if you are very unlucky. Chicken Pox may not seem like a big deal, but trust me you do not want Shingles.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
I don't think you understand the concept of criminal negligence, anon.
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I'm still waiting for superpowers to carve out a homeland - from other people's lands of course - for the Romani (Gypsies). Because they've also faced discrimination for millennia, and Nazis slaughtered them with as much enthusiasm as they slaughtered the Jews. But the Romani didn't get a homeland, billions a year in free weapons, and carte blanche to bomb and murder their neighbors.
Why is that?
My great-grandfather had fully webbed feet; my father and grandfather have partially webbed toes. Tell me again how mutants aren't real.
In the context of the article and the summary, mutants that are being discussed are in the X-Men comic book type mutants which have superpowers. Yes, technically speaking, mutants exist today: red haired individuals, dwarves, intersexxed, blue eyes, etc. Web feet falls into this category. These is not what the poster is talking about. Congratulations on either not understanding context or not bother reading the first few lines of the anything.
And since unvaccinated people have existed as long as the species has, it's pretty clear they cannot "doom us all".
You are aware that antibiotics are slowly becoming useless when it comes to fighting diseases right? Overuse and resistant strains may mean that in the future, vaccines will be one of the few effective ways of dealing with some diseases. The unvaccinated will cause major problems and my doom us all.
Good job of expressing the know-nothing authoritarian viewpoint so popular on the Internet these days! Mike Godwin needs to come up with a new law - something like "in any Internet forum there is a 100% probability that overly simplistic authoritarian responses to complex propositions will be voted insightful by self-appointed experts
Good job of not understanding or reading or thinking about what is being discussed.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Will you stop spreading that lie, please?
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well then I guess we would have to get rid of insurance companies and have an actual social medical program. One where you will know what you are predisposed for and be able to make rational decisions.
We end up with better health care, and no more lying insurance SOBs.
Won, win.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1. Why do you think people who have sex deserve less protection?
If you're about to have sex with someone, you deserve to know if they have a deadly disease. But not before. Before that, it's none of your business.
2. You can catch HIV/AIDS from someone without having sex
Yes, but it requires actual action on their part to spread it and there's no vaccine to get rid of the disease or prevent its transmission. It doesn't just spread by itself, like the Measles or Mumps or Chicken Pox or the Flu.
Yawn.
I have lived all my life with the possibility of contracting a fatal disease from some other person. The fact that I've been vaccinated, and others haven't, doesn't provide me with some magical immunity to death.
We all die. Stop being such an alarmist and live your life without this unseemly and childish fearmongering.
And stop looking for scapegoats among the foolish and weak. If you want to attack someone, show some spirit, and attack the rich and powerful who are doing more to hurt you than any stupid anti-vaxxer ever will.