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Time To Remove 'Philosophical' Exemption From Vaccine Requirements?
An anonymous reader writes: Michigan has a problem. Over the past decade, the number of unvaccinated kindergartners has spiked. "Nearly half of the state's population lives in counties with kindergarten vaccination rates below the level needed for "herd immunity," the public health concept that when at least 93 percent of people are vaccinated, their immunity protects the vulnerable and prevents the most contagious diseases from spreading." Surprise, surprise, the state is now in the midst of a whooping cough outbreak. How do these kids get into public schools without being vaccinated? Well, Michigan is among the 19 U.S. states that allow "philosophical" objections to the vaccine requirements for schoolchildren. (And one of the 46 states allowing religious exemption.) A new editorial is now calling for an end to the "philosophical" exemption.
The article says, "Those who choose not to be vaccinated and who choose not to vaccinate their children allow a breeding ground for diseases to grow and spread to others. They put healthy, vaccinated adults at risk because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. They especially put the most vulnerable at risk — infants too young to be vaccinated, the elderly, people with medical conditions that prevent vaccination, and those undergoing cancer treatments or whose immune systems have been weakened." They also encourage tightening the restrictions on religious and medical waivers so that people don't just check a different box on the exemption form to get the same result. "They are free to continue believing vaccines are harmful, even as the entire medical and scientific communities try in vain to tell them otherwise. But they should not be free to endanger the lives of everyone else with their views."
The article says, "Those who choose not to be vaccinated and who choose not to vaccinate their children allow a breeding ground for diseases to grow and spread to others. They put healthy, vaccinated adults at risk because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. They especially put the most vulnerable at risk — infants too young to be vaccinated, the elderly, people with medical conditions that prevent vaccination, and those undergoing cancer treatments or whose immune systems have been weakened." They also encourage tightening the restrictions on religious and medical waivers so that people don't just check a different box on the exemption form to get the same result. "They are free to continue believing vaccines are harmful, even as the entire medical and scientific communities try in vain to tell them otherwise. But they should not be free to endanger the lives of everyone else with their views."
Don't remove the exemption, just exempt the people using the exemption from being able to frequent public areas without protective clothing (protective as in protecting others from them, not protective as in protecting them from everyone else).
Its illegal to be naked in most public places, its illegal to knowingly infect others with dangerous illnesses, so why shouldn't it be illegal to knowingly be in a public place when you are much more open to infection from dangerous illnesses and thus to infect others with them...?
If we all got vaccinated, at least we'd have a measure of "nerd immunity".
I cannot hide my incredulity over the fact that Mississippi is one of one only two states that do not permit religious or philosophical exemptions. The other is West Virginia.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Here is a rebuttal article http://scienceblogs.com/insole...
The few nut jobs who are against vaccinations aren't the real problem. A shit ton of non-vaccinated illegals flooding into the public schools is driving the spread of whopping cough and EV-D68.
Here's my Philosophical objection: if people can be exempt based on religious beliefs I can be exempt because I feel vaccines are bad.
A recent outbreak in Texas (last year, in fact) should have given these folks a heads up! http://www.forbes.com/sites/em...
Good point.
My wife got quite the little education when she bought some cough "medicine" for our toddler. She complained it didn't help and maybe that was a bad sign. So I get home and see she accidentally got some of that diluted by 10^12 crap, and educated her that she bought $8 of water in a tiny bottle.
The labeling is done to look just like all the real medicines, and unless you are familiar with the whole dilution notation and concept the label appears to indicate it actually has ingredients.
In the end the lesson is that these voodoo whack jobs are a major danger to more than just themselves. As such, they should be better regulated to protect us from their witchcraft.
Government forcing medical procedures on anyone is really not something we want, especially since government won't take responsibility for the (admittedly unlikely) consequences of a bad result.
Of course it is best to not force things upon someone. That doesn't mean that one should be able to opt out from one thing while enjoying the other.
Public schools typically places a lot of children in a small area. Having vaccinated people there is a bad idea. One should not assume that you can opt out from one of them but not the other.
It also doesn't seem reasonable that someone refusing preventive care like vaccination should be able to enjoy tax funded medical support like ObamaCare once shit hits the fan.
You should have the right to opt out from society, but if you do you should have to deal with the consequences alone.
So, basically, there's very little reason to think that a parent refusing to vaccinate their child would not be able to home school them
Not much reason to allow unvaccinated (by choice) children into public schools then.
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if someone refuses to vaccinate their children, schools should refuse to allow them in.
Many states do that. California has a "no shots, no school" policy. Kindergarten registration is in March, when parents receive a list of required shots. If the shots aren't documented by the time school starts in late August, the kid is not allowed to attend class.
I lived in China for several years, and my kids attended public school there. They have an even better system: They provide the shots at the school. A pair of nurses shows up, all the kids line up, and take their turn. It is very efficient, very cost effective, and requires no time or effort by the parents. They also have fewer complications, since the nurses know exactly what they are doing. They go from school to school and do the same vaccine everyday to hundreds or thousands of kids. So they know the dose, the procedure, and are familiar with common side effects.
And certainly not to kill rats! Any level of arsenic in the water supply that would kill rats would kill every PERSON who drinks it in short order!
In fact, the standard for "potable" water, at least in the USA, says that effort should be made to drive the concentration of arsenic in tap water to ZERO.
--PM