New Jersey Gov. Christie: Parents Should Have Choice In Vaccinations

kwyjibo87 writes: New Jersey Governor and self-appointed public health expert Chris Christie weighed in on the public debate over whether or not parents should have a choice in vaccinating their children, telling reporters in the U.K., "I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that's the balance that the government has to decide." He added, "Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others." These statements from Gov. Christie follow President Obama commenting in an interview with NBC: "There is every reason to get vaccinated — there aren't reasons to not."

Gov. Christie quickly backpedaled on his "vaccine choice" comments, with the Governor's office stating, "The Governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection and with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated," but amending: "At the same time different states require different degrees of vaccination, which is why he was calling for balance in which ones government should mandate."

Comments

Backpedalled?

[BarbaraHudson]

This is what happens when you get extreme partisanship - the other side's knee-jerk reaction to anything is to oppose it. Kind of like a rabid animal will bite anything.

Re:Backpedalled?

[MightyMartian]

If vaccinations aren't mandatory for a fairly large proportion of the population, herd immunity is compromised and then not only do you get the poor children of anti-vaccine types getting diseases like measles, but those children who cannot, for health reasons, receive the vaccine, are put at substantial risk.

I'm willing to compromise, however. Don't vaccinate your kids, and they are not allowed in a school, daycare, public park or anywhere else where they may come into contact with other children.

Re:Backpedalled?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some kids have legitimate health reasons for why they cannot receive vaccinations. Children who could be vaccinated but dont put those kids at a higher risk.

Re:Backpedalled?

[Fire_Wraith]

Because not everyone can get vaccinated, for health reasons. For instance, a child that is too young to receive the vaccine can still contract, and die from, a disease like measles. Others have weakened immune systems, or medical allergies, that may make it difficult to immunize them. These people rely on herd immunity, where enough other people are immunized that the disease can't gain a foothold and spread. If one child in a classroom isn't vaccinated, they're not going to catch it from their classmates, but when 5 or even ten children in a classroom aren't vaccinated, the risk increases dramatically.

Re:Backpedalled?

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't mandated to attend a public school. You can home school if you wish, and no, your taxes don't follow you, just as they don't only get applied to the streets you drive on.

Re: Backpedalled?

[Frosty Piss]

Most of the parents claiming allergies are full of shit, the majority of these so-called allergies are in the parent's mind and not supported by a diagnosis from a legitimate unbiased medical professional.

Not all, but certainly most of these people are full of it.

It's almost like Christian Science.

Re:Backpedalled?

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: #1 Government mandates that children must attend school

But, government does not mandate that it must be public school.
There are private schools in every state.
There are home schooling provisions in the laws of most states.
In some states, home schools are chartered under the same laws as, or are otherwise considered equivalent to, a private school.
There are also private tutors.
The status of private tutors under the law as either a private school or a home school vary from state to state.

RE: #2 Government mandates that all children who attend a school must meet certain health requirements.

Private and home schools may or may not require vaccinations.
Most states have no provisions under the law that make vaccination mandatory for private schools.
Those states that do have such a provision for private schools only make it mandatory if the private school receives public funds or state accreditation.
I know of no state that makes any mandatory vaccination demands on home schools.
Even for public schools, alll states provide vaccination exemptions on medical grounds, most states provide exemptions on religious grounds, and some states even provide exemptions on non-religious philosophical grounds.
There are also some public school districts and/or states as a whole that use rated vaccination schedules where they only make mandatory vaccines against high risk communicable diseases in the top tier of that schedule.

RE: #3 If children do not meet those health requirements, See #1

More like see the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Vaccination mandates only apply to attending public schools.
If such a mandate conflicts with your religious beliefs or conscience, that is why you have private schooling, home schooling, and tutoring options.

All of that being said, if your religious or philosophical beliefs allow it, as a parent, you should consider the risks an benefits of each an every vaccine separately. Weight any risk of harm you may potentially see in a particular vaccine against the harm the disease would cause if contracted.
In almost all cases, the potential negative interactions of a particular vaccine are known.
Also, consider that there are a large number of horrific diseases for which nearly any vaccine side-effect is preferable to the risk of contracting or spreading the disease.
In short, do your homework and make the prudent judgement for each vaccination individually.
You will find that, in manyt cases, getting yourself and your children the vaccination is justifiable on its face.

Re:Backpedalled?

[Bengie]

Not sending your children to school can land you in jail or have them taken from you for neglect. Why not vaccines.

Re:Backpedalled?

[jklovanc]

You cannot eliminate all risk in life.

True but you can control some of it. Vaccines and herd immunity have been shown time and time again to reduce the spread of certain diseases and save people's lives.

Where are we gonna draw the line?

Where a few small acts have been proven to save the child's and/or someone else's life.

Some kids have legitimate health reasons why they can't survive cancer.

Cancer is not a communicable disease and it has not been proven that throwing money at it will ever make it so.

A lot of kids injure themselves tripping over their own shoelaces.

Injury is not death. Another issue is that lack of safety equipment does not put other kids at risk of death.

Vaccinations are a great thing, but this argument sticks in my craw.

You whole argument seems to be about where to draw the line. Sure they are arbitrary but it is a decision based on science, the ability to do it and the impact it has on society. The only negative impact I can see to vaccination is taking away the ability of a parent to send an un-vaccinated child to school. That is a very small price to pay for herd immunity.

Re:But Rand Paul says

[Anonymous Coward]

Nixon is a liberal by today's standards.

The most important vaccine

[Roger W Moore]

No vaccine is 100% effective.

That's very clearly the case. We used to have a really useful and highly effective vaccine that gave protection against the root cause of the problem we are discussing here: ignorance. The vaccine was education. Sadly as this has been watered down it has become less effective with the result that we now see increasing outbreaks of ignorance worldwide resulting in new symptoms such as intelligent design and not having your kids vaccinated as well as some old symptoms, like astrology, re-emerging.

Sadly governments have not responded to this by once again strengthening the vaccine, education, that has protected us for so long. Instead they seem to prefer to treat each individual symptom of the disease by passing laws. This is simply not going to work: already new strains of ignorance, such as intelligent design, have proven remarkably resistant to this treatment and have started to attack the education vaccine directly weakening its effectiveness further.