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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."
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."
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yet again, we get a GOP primary debate circus solely around Tardisil and the merits of encephalitis over autism. Fuck this party, I'll go Liberta--what's that, Mr. Paul? Oh. You're one of them, too. Shit.
Rand Paul says vaccines cause mental illnesses! I guess that explains libertarianism.
He was obviously speaking off the cuff. One can't expect a sitting governor to have given any prior thought to controversial public health issues that have been in the news for fricking ever.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I'm going to bet he's referring to the HPV vaccine. Because obviously if you vaccinate your kids against an STD (even one that causes cancer!), you're just promoting sex. Never mind that the stats don't back that up at all.
If only his comments had clarified anything. After his clarifying statement, I still have no idea what he meant. Typical politician.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Don't freak out at the phrase "vaccine choice". The speaker may not mean what you assume.
Rand Paul said something similar in a TV interview today. The interviewer was shocked and Rand Paul explained that "vaccine choice" does not inherently mean some science denier who does not believe in medicine. What Paul, and probably Christie, mean is that parents can reasonably delay some vaccines. Paul mentioned that children sometimes receive a battery of vaccines at the same time. He said that a small child probably doesn't need to have that Hepatitis vaccination right now since it is a sexually transmitted disease, a parent can reasonably wait many years before such a vaccination.
So if Christie has a similar point of view then there may actually merely be clarification going on and not so much backpedalling.
Vaccinate or GTFO. You don't have to live in my community, state or country if your belief in pseudoscience starts to impact the health and safety of those around you. Just because I'm vaccinated doesn't mean I'm 100% immune (especially as I get older), that we're both vaccinated helps contain contagious disease so that I am less likely to be affected by it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Not all vaccines should be mandatory. For example there is an anthrax vaccine. Does everyone need to have it? As Christie said;
Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.
By the way, parents do have a choice. They can have their children get the required vaccines, they can home school or they can create their own school that does not require vaccines. I predict a non-vaccine school will last until everyone gets sick.
Rights are there to make sure that people have freedoms. The very idea of limits is part of the idea of rights. The basic idea is you should be free to do what you want to do with the limit that what you want to do doesn't do harm to others.
A certain segment of society has forgotten this. The most basic and important right is to live. Your rights STOP where you start interfering with others. If you don't want to vaccinate your kids you can do that, but maybe you shouldn't be allowed to send those kids to public school.
Personally, I think a lot of these people should find a desert island somewhere and live there. That way they can have all the unlimited freedoms they want.
"Not every vaccine is created equal and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others... I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things"
I, for one, proudly agree with the wise governor that some vaccines shouldn't mandatory for children. Like the shingles vaccine -- expensive and marginally effective, and practically useless if you're under the age of 60. I don't know why'd I'd ask my parents to decide on this vaccine call for me when I hit the age of 60 but his point is valid.
But god, I hope he's not referring to Mumps, Measels, Rubella, and the like!
Hey mate, spare a sig?
Natural selection will weed out the weakest, parents that oppose vaccinations are doing God's work by allowing their children to die of once vanquished diseaases. I, for one, welcome our rubella infected underlords!
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."
If parents are allowed to choose then that choice should not be without consequences. If these parents decide to not vaccinate their children for diseases like measles for any reason other than a documented medical condition that makes vaccination inadvisable for that specific individual, then those children should not be allowed to attend public school and those parents should be legally liable for that choice. If the child gets the disease then the parents should risk going to jail for child endangerment if there is an unfortunate medical outcome. They have the choice but that choice should not be consequence free because it isn't. They are taking a gamble that their child and those others who cannot get vaccinated will avoid the illness and if that gamble comes up snake-eyes then punishment should follow.
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."
So Christie is endangering public health in order to pander to his political base. Make any decision about whether to vote for Christie an easy one for me.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
Check out the deep south and mid-west (AKA "Jesusland"); as regions, the have the low vaccination exemption rates compared to more liberal western and northeastern states. 7 of the 8 most vaccinated states when to Romney in '12.
If vaccination is going to be recommended for everyone, their effectiveness should be established using the "gold standard" of evidence used by medical researchers. That is currently considered to be blinded randomized controlled trials. Which vaccines have been tested this way? Any? I know there have been none in the case of measles.
Because not everybody can take the vaccination. As such, they depend on other people not getting whatever it is, and then infecting them.
Sure, there are some things that could be advantageous if they were mandatory, but as soon the lobby dollars get the legal right to force folks to inject their kids with stuff, do you think it will stop anywhere reasonable? If so, you've got a lot more faith in the basic humanity of pharma execs than I do. We can justify anything in the name of enhancing shareholder value.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics... I searched your italicized quote there. First result.
They don't believe they are responsible for infections of vaccinated people, so they'd never pay. Because the anti-vaccination crowd lacks some basic understanding of the issue at hand.
Besides, what would be the right amount of payment for lung damage, deafness, blindness or fatal encephalitis done to your child?
Your right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion ends approximately where it starts to pose immediate physical danger to your community.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Vaccines are not 100% effective. If an average person is in sufficient contact to transmit to ten other people over the span of a disease, and have a 90% chance of passing something to them when they're unvaccinated, you've got an outbreak on your hands. If the transmission rate is 2% for vaccinated people, it might really suck to be in that 2%, but it won't cause an epidemic.
How about someone else who can't receive the vaccine? The whole point of herd immunity is to protect those who, for health reasons, cannot receive a vaccination. Once that herd immunity is compromised, it's not just the children of evil, repugnant, vile, despicable, moronic parents who deny decades of medical science that can be harmed, but the children of decent rational parents whose children have immunological conditions that prevent them from being immunized.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yea because vaccines suddenly make it impossible to contract the disease
I'm not against vaccination but as a parent x2 let me tell you that public health officials and pharmaceutical companies have not done enough in my view to earn the trust of people who have valid concerns about the health risks associated with today's vaccines.
Instead, we are met with two politically polarized viewpoints and aggressive people on both sides which really doesn't make things any easier. Oh and by the way parents do have a choice.. 'Religious beliefs' is a valid workaround at least in my corner of the world (non-US).
in light of the measles outbreak linked to Disneyland ("The scratchiest place on earth!") so in that sense, he was dumb to say parents have a valid reason to hold off. It's measles. It was fixed through vaccination decades ago. Do we really need to drag a candidate kicking and screaming into the *previous* century let alone this one?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The absurdity of this argument is that even if it were true, is having a mentally ill child worse than death?
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included." --Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008.
Even the quote Slate cherry-picked to drive their click-bait headline is innocuous. Parents *do* have a right to decide what's best for their children. That right must be balanced with public health concerns, so it makes sense to make vaccination mandatory (or mandatory-for-public-schoolers) in some cases, but surely not *all* cases as you move down the scale of public health impact. In particular there will be cases where the public interest would be served (a little) by forcing everyone to be vaccinated, but that interest doesn't outweigh the additional dilution of parental rights. That seems to be all Christie said here.
In other words, Paul, like Christie, is courting the Evangelical vote.
Actually another poster points out that according to the CDC vaccination rates are higher in the bible belt.
So maybe they are courting the coastal soccer moms who go to hollywood celebrities for medical advice.
Vaccinations do not prevent you from being infected; They significantly reduce the likelihood of you being infected from any given exposure to the disease. If everyone is vaccinated this results in the disease dying back due to the infection rate being too low to sustain the disease, meaning everyone is less likely to be exposed. However, if there are many who are not vaccinated the dieback doesn't happen because there are enough easily-infected people around to keep the disease alive. Even though you might be vaccinated and more resistant to infection than if you weren't, if you come into contact with infected people over and over you stand a chance of being infected yourself.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Obviously! Kids dying of disease is all just a natural part of robust biological competition. Allowing the weak and mentally defective to live, on the other hand, inevitably results in some tax-and-spend bleeding heart coming along and demanding to expropriate the wealth creators in order to provide 'humane treatment' to such parasites.
Really, since parents own their children, they should just be allowed to abandon them in the wilderness to die(as long as they aren't trespassing on somebody else's property, or supporting the socialist national parks by doing so) if they suspect that kiddo's ROI isn't favorable. They shouldn't be allowed to abort them, of course; but postnatal headcount reduction is how freedom works.
Are people actually considering putting him on the ballot? Is this any way to run a circus? And then you wonder why the rest don't vote...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Christie got savaged, and rightly so. so he pulled the ultimate GOP sin, and flip-flopped.
actually, there is lots of choice... you can get many vaccines from Merck, or GSK, or Pasteur...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I agree with Christie's comments in this case. There are plenty of vaccines that should be mandated, with MMR being at the top of the list.
But read this:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/15/...
The point is that Perry tried to mandate that girls get the HPV vaccine made by Merck, with the implication being that Merck bought the support. HPV is a good vaccine to have but there's no comparison between HPV and measles.
We again have this issue where the soundbite media can't handle nuance and blind partisanship is going to reign. Let's face it, had Christie parroted Obama's exact words there would still be people here who would claim he's an idiot for saying that.
The anti-vax crowd is wrong - deadly wrong - but that doesn't mean that every vaccine out there should be mandated. I mean, how about the flu vaccine? Shingles?
Where's that line?
Do you have ESP?
I wonder if Gov. Christie could name some of the diseases he thinks we vaccinate for unnecessarily? What are these innocuous infections the government is forcing parents to prevent?
Whether their kid gets the vaccine in the arm or the thigh.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
What valid health concerns are those?
The only concern of any kind I've ever seen raised is autism, which is based on a report that failed to show a causal link, had too small a sample size, and was thoroughly debunked by peer review. It is not a valid concern.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
... the only thing that bothers me is how gleeful some are about the "mandating" part.
And eager to use the same machinery to mandate other things.
what better time to give them "mercury" or whatever through a different means? Shampoo... makeup? Watch the 1989 Batman for the obvious, or...
/. reader) - the joker uses combinations of makeup, deodorant, shampoos, etc to combine and make his "Smiley" condition which renders the subject hilariously dead. Oh that smile!
spoiler (which shouldn't be a spoiler for *any*
Pretty much this
...to cover a waffle that big...
Talking out of both sides of his mouth -- his kids were vaccinated but parents should have the right to put their kids and others at risk -- oh, state's rights and the GOP party line... The only thing that would have made it better was if he was drinking a glass of water at the same time and spinning a plate on the end of a stick. This guy gives buffoons, clowns, and circus performers a bad name.
Every once in a while, rarely, a politician actually speaks his mind (McCain for example), and usually catches hell for it, not keeping to the party line.
I searched your italicized quote there. First result.
Thank you.
It looks like he's talking about Reye's Syndrome, a pathology that can cause substantial brain damage (and/or other things: Liver damage, death, ...) in children - adults generally recover fully after a couple weeks. (I wanted to be sure he hadn't signed on to the immunization/autism claims, which have been thoroughly discredited.)
Reye/Reye's is a reasonably rare side effect of several viral illnesses, including immunizations for them. Risk of it seems to be multiplied by a factor of something like five if aspirin is taken, but aspirin (or other salicylates) is not necessary for its occurrence. It seems also to be associated with pre-existing metabolic disorders, so some families might be at very high risk while others effectively immune.
It's clear from even the soundbite posted: Rand's claim is that the decision to risk a child's health is properly the parents', and the government should not be able to force the child's exposure to a series of these risks over the parents' objections - informed or otherwise.
Immunizations are partly about population immunity - reducing the density of people susceptible to a disease to the point that it peters out in a declining exponential rather than blowing up in an expanding exponential, thus also protecting those not (yet) immunized, for whom the immunization was ineffective, or who were at risk despite the availability of immunization (e.g. AIDS sufferers). So risk/benefit calculations are for populations as well. Accepting the risk of the immunization helps others as well as the immunized person, so being immunized is partly an altruistic act.
Rand's point is that he believes the government shouldn't have the power to FORCE people to risk their lives for the benefit of others, that these life-critical decisions are personal and should be left up to the people in question (or their guardians if they're too young to make the choice themselves).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The kids who were not vaccinated who are grown now should get their shots. It helps with keeping group immunity high and rubella can cause birth defects if caught during pregnancy.
How is something fishy going on?
No one (especially not scientists or doctors) claim that the measles vaccine is an immunity shield. This is basic science here. It's no surprise to anyone and it's the main reason that herd immunity is a required part of the vaccination system - precisely because the vaccine is not 100% effective (just very effective), and because certain people cannot be immunised due to other medical reasons.
There's nothing fishy about people who have been vaccinated catching measles.
But that is part of the problem... really stupid people who think their ignorant, uneducated opinion is as valid as the accumulation of centuries of medical knowledge. You supposedly have a brain.. use it. Learn. Grow. Become a thinking person.
If your car breaks down, you take it to a mechanic; if you travel by airplane, you have a pilot fly the plane; if you get sick, you go to a doctor... not a mechanic, or pilot.... and certainly not a blonde brain-dead ex Playboy playmate who's biggest claim to fame is taking off her cloths so a bunch of horny guys can jerk off to pictures of her.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
yeah, let's bring back choice for parents. They should also decide whether they give their children seat-belts, toothbrushes, adult supervision, or even an education. Of course, no-one's saying those things are bad for children. Polio, whooping cough and smallpox are bad for children but children rarely (or never regarding smallpox) catch those childhood diseases: What changed? Vaccinations eradicated those childhood diseases. There's 60 years of proof that vaccinations keep children safe. So the real choice is how much danger children will be exposed to.
Parents claim it's not safe for children to walk home by themselves despite kidnappings being very rare and unlikely. Yet so many of them claim "no-one has measles, so why vaccinate children against a disease that is rare and unlikely". That might be a double standard.
General concerns as to the side effects.. Its risk vs benefit.. How good is this for my child basically. My point is that they spend so much energy just trying to ram it down our throats that it does invoke some sense of suspicion as to the motives. I do think less scare mongering and a more trustworthy demeanor, rationale based promotion would go a long way to improving vaccination rates.
What valid health concerns are those?
Vaccines do carry risk of serious side-effects, and sometimes death.
See HRSA vaccine injury claim stats and Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for data.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
Why not leave this up to the insurance companies? Oh, right, because we mandate insurance for everybody. Once you do that, then you need to mandate specific coverage from the insurance companies. And then you need to mandate the vaccines people need to get. And then you need to figure out what rules to set up if people choose not to get vaccinated, or can't get vaccinated, or have religious objections, or were visited by unvaccinated relatives from Elbonia.
If we actually had private health insurance, health insurance companies would work this out themselves. It would probably come down to: you don't want to get vaccinated, you pay an extra $1/month.
This has only been explained only about a zillion times. Vaccines are not 100%. Society relies on herd immunity to reduce the number of paths a virus can use across a large group.
Herd immunity is simply a concept about whether a disease is likely to spread through an entire population or die out after infecting only part of a population. It's relevant if you look at animal herds and want to minimize the overall loss of life.
Human beings aren't cattle. Even if the assumptions of herd immunity apply to human populations (a big if), the measures to implement it don't. For example, in order to achieve herd immunity, you might well decide to slaughter animals that don't respond to the vaccine. Or you might preemptively restrict the movement of animals in a herd.
Treating humans as members of a "herd" or collective is wrong; human beings are individuals with individual rights, and those rights include not having the government inject substances into you that it deems beneficial for the rest of society. It doesn't matter how good the evidence is in any particular case. Vaccinations should be voluntary, period.
Wait, so you want me to undergo mandatory testing and training to operate a motor vehicle so I don't unnecessarily put anyone else's life at risk? Absurd!
Blah blah human blah blah cattle blah slaughter blah blah individual rights blah blah government blah inject substances blah.
Oh my God!!one!1! The Government injects subtances that will transmogrify our human babies into cattle ready for slaughter!
Quickly, you should mooo before others realize you're a troll!
Most of the anti-vax people seem to have moved past the autism claims (though they're not above bringing it up) and are now in the "scary ingredients and 'toxins'" arena. They list a bunch of things that sound scary but either 1) aren't really in vaccines, 2) are used in the production of vaccines but are removed before the final product, or 3) are present in the shot but at such low levels that other "natural" sources contribute more. (An example of the last one is formaldehyde. Sounds scary to inject into you except a banana has more in it than a vaccine.) They also use "toxins" but don't define what these are. Since they never really say what scary substance they think is in the vaccine, you can never prove it's not in there. By their logic, they win.
And, to address the GP poster: I'm a parent X2 also. One of my kids has autism. Both of my kids are fully vaccinated and thus I've given them the best chance I can to avoid many vaccine preventable diseases (measles, mumps, whooping cough, etc). The protection isn't 100% - we still rely on herd immunity in case one of the shots didn't quite "take" - but it's close. I couldn't live with myself if I refused a shot and my child died of that disease. (And this doesn't even get into my child infecting another child if I refused vaccination. Being a parent means that I can't stand seeing ANY child suffer.)
Vaccines are effective enough that if everyone who could be vaccinated was vaccinated, many more diseases would join smallpox in the "diseases vaccines eradicated" club. Here's hoping that club expands soon.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
That's what this was. I think at the end of the day, Christie is too big-city, East Coast and Joisey to have any chance at GOP run for president, so he takes the opportunities where he can to somehow try to make himself more appealing to the so-called GOP base, probably the "matter of faith" lunatics who don't want gummint "chemicals" given to their kids against their wishes.
And he did it with the worst possible issue. Not vaccinating children is about as libertarian as tellng your children to go play in freeway traffic. Not only does he come down very wrong on the issue, he comes out making himself look like a patsy to the worst possible flavor of the Republican base and not like the "sensible" and "non-partisan" Republican he'd like to style himself as.
It's funny you mention a rabid animal...
We now live in a country where if I choose not to get my dog vaccinated against rabies, not only am I fined, but am legally responsible for the medical care costs of anyone my dog infects.
But if I choose not to vaccinate my child and they get someone else sick, then it's OK, because it was my *choice*.
The inescapable conclusion in my mind is that we care more for the welfare of our dog population than we do our human one.
Wait... so your argument "proving" that the measles vaccine doesn't work is that people just decided not to spread measles but before they intentionally spread it? Why do you think people intentionally spread it? Because they thought it was fun? And they just *happened* to all decide to stop at once at exactly the same time the vaccine was introduced?
And I thought the level of conspiracy needed for "fake the moon landing" was large! A whole generation must have been in on "the vaccine conspiracy!"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The absurdity of this argument is that even if it were true, is having a mentally ill child worse than death?
That's a decision for parents to make, not for you or for the CDC.
That's the libertarian position: you decide which schools your kids go to and pay for it, and the schools decide who they take and what requirements they have, including strict vaccination requirements.
Unfortunately, it's not what progressives and "liberals" want. After deciding that everybody must go to public schools and deciding how to assign people to schools in order to maximize diversity and accomplish other goals, you then get into discussions about what the curriculum must be, and whether kids have to be vaccinated or not. And since everybody is forced to pay for the public schools, this leads to irreconcilable conflicts.
Of course they deserve to make a risk assessment, furthermore they should. They just don't always have the right to act on their assessment.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Here's an article entitled "Here's Where 2016 Candidates Stand On Vaccinations".
Mandatory kidney transplants?
Are you seriously trying to equate being poked in the arm with a small needle a few time with giving up a kidney? They are many orders of magnitude different. Calling it a medical procedure sound ominous but it is a very minor medical procedure.
Undergoing medical procedures to help other people should be voluntary.
Vaccines are not required but they are required to attend school. You can refuse to vaccinate your child and educate them somewhere else.
I hate to break this to you but Batman is fiction.
Christie put a nurse in quarantine who tested negative for Ebola because he thought she might be contagious - against the recommendations of the CDC - but unvaccinated kids - no problem - it's the parents choice - wonder if when the kids might be exposed he will put them in quarantine
If you don't want to vaccinate your kids you can do that, but maybe you shouldn't be allowed to send those kids to public school.
The problem with that is that you really need the kids of idiots who don't vaccinate to get an education to stop the ignorance spreading. If you keep them out of school then they will end up even more ignorant than their parents and things will rapidly spiral downhill from there one they get to vote.
The Demagoguery over this issue is breath taking.
If you recall, Rick Perry mandated HPV vaccinations in 2007.
Lots of people totally lost their shit over this despite the fact that HPV can cause cancer and the vaccine is effective and not just because of donations. The term parental choice was thrown around a lot.
Many people in the news on their high horse about Christie 's comments are the same ones who were shitting bricks about Perry''s mandate. Hell, even Obama was on the fence about vaccinations in 2008.
So file all this under Complete and Utter Presidential Race Bullshit.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Good health and hygiene is much more effective than any vaccine.
And we can all avoid cancer, transplants, AIDS, etc that compromise our immune systems. Also the recent outbreaks have occurred in areas where the incidence of non-vaccination has been high but hygiene has been good.
Remove the vermin which spread disease
Vermin do not spread measles, mumps or rubella.
teach people to wash their hands.
Which has no effect what so ever on the viruses in the air we breathe.
It was those practices which lead to the decline of infectious disease.
Possibly a decline but vaccines lead to a much larger decline.
not some government voodoo.
Would that be the "vodoo" that eliminated certain diseases from some countries?
The immunisation program has been quite successful. Cuba declared the disease eliminated in the 1990s, and in 2004 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that both the congenital and acquired forms of rubella had been eliminated from the United States.
We still get immunized because the disease can be imported from other countries.
Nothing fishy at all. Vaccines are not silver bullets, and no vaccine is 100% effective. However, with high coverage, the vaccine is *effective enough* to prevent or greatly reduce an outbreak.
With a substantial proportion of non-vaccinated people (effectiveness: 0%), then yes, even some vaccinated will be infected. No reputable source ever said otherwise, though.
Interesting how Obama, Paul, and Christie have the same position yet they are represented so differently in the article (unless of course I'm missing where Obama has suggested making immunizations required by law somewhere.)
My point is that they spend so much energy just trying to ram it down our throats that it does invoke some sense of suspicion as to the motives.
Maybe the motive is that it is a simple thing that saves people's lives and saving people's lives is very important.
You are basically saying "they are pushing too hard there must be something wrong". Pushing less could also cause people to think "they are not pushing very hard it must not be important". By requiring vaccinations for school attendance meets the criteria for importance while allowing staunch anti-vaxers to educate their children elsewhere.
The reason why there's such a strong push to make it mandatory is because it is a considerable public safety hazard. If you've read anything about the history of vaccinations, and the diseases that were wiped out thanks to it, you should know why it is such a serious matter.
All of which is less that the risk of death/disease without vaccines. In 26 years there have been 3,540 cases compensated. That covers all vaccines.
According to the CDC;
Before the measles vaccination program started in 1963, we estimate that about 3 to 4 million people got measles each year in the United States. Of those people, 400 to 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 4,000 developed encephalitis (brain swelling) from measles.
If you use those figures to calculate the effect of not having the vaccine over 26 years you get 78 million infections, 10,400 deaths and 96,000 cases of encephalitis. That is only one of the big three vaccines. That makes 3,500 cases seem like a very small number.
Vaccines are not completely safe but not having vaccines is less save by orders of magnitude.
However I have a government health organization attempting to scare me into believing that if I don't take some steps that my child will get sick.
Actually you have the accumulated knowledge of the science and medical profession. The government has little to do with it.
Oh what you don't trust them either? Go back to the GP's point on using your brain and start again.
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.
Yes, taxes absolutely are a socialistic method of distributing costs that seem important to other people. I'm not willing to live in a third-world existence surrounded by people who can't afford to individually bear the costs of school at the time their kids are of school age. If you want your kid to go to private school, that is your choice. But the taxes you pay are not for your kid, it is for everyone regardless of how many kids you have.
And yes you do have the right to elect people making these rules, have a smaller taxable property, or move to a different town.
So where do you draw the line? Who determines whether a medical procedure is sufficiently benign so that the government can force you to undergo it? Remember, these are the same institutions that couldn't even get basic nutritional information right and keep approving drugs that turn out to be unsafe.
Personally, I believe that MMR and DTP are safe and unobjectionable. But there are legitimate medical and/or non-medical reasons to object to other vaccines (e.g., HPV, TB).
That is not strictly speaking true. The US government can force anybody to get vaccinated, although currently, that is only being used (in most cases) in schools.
In any case, there is nothing wrong with schools requiring kids to be vaccinated. The part that is wrong is that parents are required to pay for public schools regardless even if they disagree with public school policies, whether it is vaccinations or the curriculum. The issue of imposing vaccination requirements and making religious exemptions happens just because government is imposing public schools and taxes paying for public schools. That's the real issue, not whether vaccinations are good or bad.
Contagions don't care about rights. Neither do they care about opinions. They certainly don't care about polls.
You, silfen, appear to be a complete moron.
So where do you draw the line?
You draw the line where it is obvious that the benefit far outweighs the risk.
Who determines whether a medical procedure is sufficiently benign so that the government can force you to undergo it?
The people who elect the officials.
But there are legitimate medical and/or non-medical reasons to object to other vaccines (e.g., HPV, TB).
References? BTW, there is only one state that required HPV vaccines and that is in high school. There is no requirement for TB vaccine anywhere in the US.
he US government can force anybody to get vaccinated,
Citation required.
The part that is wrong is that parents are required to pay for public schools regardless even if they disagree with public school policies, whether it is vaccinations or the curriculum.
Taxes are paid for a lot of things that are not used by individual tax payers. Case in point, people without children pay taxes for public schools even though they never send children there. People who own cars still pay for public transit even though they never use it. It is all about choice. It is the parent's option to vaccinate their children to the standard required to attend school. They also have the option of not vaccinating their children and not using public schools.
PS. Here are the vaccination requirements in the US
human beings are individuals with individual rights, and those rights include not having the government inject substances into you
What about the right to not being infected by your precious little snowflake who attends the same school ?
Rand Paul reminds me of an argument I once had with someone years ago - I can't even remember where it was now. We were discussing car safety, and a recent study that showed that SUVs were the safest car to be inside in an accident (Excluding rollovers), but the least-safe car to be outside of. Their sturdyness and sheer mass squished anything they hit at high speed into a mangled pancake of flesh and steel, and they had a particular tendency to decapitate pedestrians as their blunt front tended to force people under the car rather than off to the sides. The person I was arguing with said he already knew this, and drove an SUV for precisely that reason - beause it was his duty to protect himself and his family from harm, not everyone else. If he could make his family safer while increasing the risk of death for everyone else in society, then he felt doing so was not only acceptable, for morally obligatory.
You clearly don't understand the evidence then.
Vaccinations are effective. This is not controversial or difficult to find evidence for, unless you specifically seek out quacks.
Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.
"Are you feeling all right?" I asked her.
"I feel all sleepy," she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
Read the rest on https://roalddahl.com/roald-da...
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
As was said many times before: States' Rights. Are they ever not embarrasing?
Sometimes I wish the states had no rights, and everything was controlled centrally. Seems a more efficient way to go. And if you distrust the federal government that much, the state governments won't protect you anyway.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
If he thnks government can force children upon unwanting parents, it's only fair he allows those parents to slowly and painfully kill chose children afterwards.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Or how about the third choice, raise them as we see fit.
What you're really saying is that you wish to impose your worldview on everyone else.
ISIS is calling and would like to talk to you, they are doing just that in the parts of Iraq they control.
You have NO idea, do you, of the insanity that you're actually suggesting?
So see, there are reasons.
You draw the line where it is obvious that the benefit far outweighs the risk.
My freedom of religion overrides that...
New Jersey Gov. Christie: Parents Should Have Choice In Vaccinations
In other words, vaccines against tuberculosis and polio should be optional. File it under #inevitablelogicalconclusion
If a doctor can find no medical reason why a person can't be vaccinated and they still choose not to be vaccinated then deport them. The creepiness of the government strapping you down screaming while they put needles in your arm (excluding executions) will be avoided, as will a bunch of diseased idiots walking around infecting the population like a pack of starving zombies. And you'll still have a choice.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I hate to break it to you but the point was that if health company wanted to poison you, then vaccines would be the stupidest way to do it.
he claims there are good reasons to not get vaccinated? like what? what good reasons?
the only good reason if you don't have the money and have to pay for the vaccines.. some cost 200 bucks / 3 years! but that's for some tropical/asian diseases..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
While I don't personally disagree with the science on principal (its been shown to be effective for a long time) I would say that science has been wrong in the past. Back on point though, I think though the issue for many is if the science is so sound why don't they promote it that way? The scare tactics only make people suspicious and when big pharm is involved many people's trust levels are automatically lowered from the outset.
They can pick any doctor they want.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
If 100% of other people are vaccinated, it's in my best interest to not vaccinate. If 0% of other people are vaccinated, then it's in my best interest to be vaccinated.
The problem is that if everyone acts in non-enlightened self-interest, then the total damage is much greater to everyone than if we act selflessly.
Learn to love Alaska
That conflict of supposed "rights" only arises because you and I are forced to pay for the same school and forced to have our kids attend the same school, i.e., it's the result of the way out school system is set up. If parents had a choice of where to send their kids and schools were free to set their own policies, this would sort itself out without all this shouting and chest beating.
Personally, I would choose schools that have strict MMR vaccination requirements. I would also choose schools that don't teach the progressive nonsense you obviously believe in.
It is mothers. Have you ever seen a man thundering about how he is not going to have his kids vaccinated come hell or high water? This is just more hidden feminist sociopathological empowerment of women. Now 20-year-old mothers are supposed to have the right to determine how dangerous their kids are to other children and the general community. And who can deny this? Nobody, they are WOMEN (and they need their vote). Expect more of this murderous political pandering to a demographic.
E Proelio Veritas.
Determined by who? Benefits and risks for who?
In different words, you are advocating mob rule: if the majority wants it, that makes it right and justifies it according to your world view.
TB vaccinations make it impossible to determine active TB infection via a skin test; that's why the US currently doesn't vaccinate against TB, while it is mandatory elsewhere. HPV vaccination is morally objectionable to many people because they object to the presumption that their kids will be unable to control their sexual urges.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts
Indeed. And not only are those policies morally wrong, they don't even accomplish what they are intended to accomplish. Both public schools and public transit are ineffective and inefficient given the vast amounts of money we sink into them, and both are the result of massive lobbying by special interest groups.
Evidently, what you're advocating is all about promoting cronyism and corruption and taking away the rights and choices of people whose views differ from the majority.
I keep seeing articles about research showing that people who gravitate toward right wing politics tend to have a psychology dominated by fear, paranoia, and emotional reactions.
I always thought those articles were smug and just a bit self serving.
I guess I still do.
However, with Christie's obvious pandering ( someone should ask him if his kids are vaccinated ) I have to wonder.
It seems like there are a large chunk of people on the right who are ready to accept any story of government lies, conspiracies, designed to pollute them or take something away from them.
It isn't a new thing either. In 2015 it is vaccines, in the 50s it was communists putting fluoride in the water.
The emotionality of it is so fucking disgusting -- and it matters.
There are serious global climate change issues, the U.S. is in danger of losing/retarding the universal healtcare it wanted for so long, and now we have previously eradicated diseases making a comeback.
All because there is a segment of the population that isn't smart enough to know when NOT to let their emotions do their thinking for them.
What you're really saying is that you wish to impose your worldview on everyone else.
Not exactly. In this case, it's like trying to impose your worldview on people who think the sky is green: they are obviously wrong. They are also harmful to others: people have died because other people didn't have proper vaccinations.
It is as much imposing your worldview on others as would be arresting a man for spreading HIV to everyone, knowingly, without telling them, when he believes HIV is harmless. Would you impose your worldview that it is NOT harmless and that he should NOT spread it to everyone upon him?
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Do not forget that, if you are sick, someone transmitted it to you. How do you suppose the disease traveled through the population?
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It's an interesting proposition, though. Segregate the unvaccinated. When they die off en masse, let the news have it. Tell them the public has been well-aware of the compromise selected for the vaccination problem, and found it an acceptable solution to isolate the dangerous, disease-vulnerable part of society from the rest so as to not overwhelm the fragile immunity provided by vaccines. Of course that fragile immunity is the difference between healthy schools all over the nation and the occasional death of hundreds of children in a single school in the span of a week, but eh.
I try. Mostly. Sometimes, I just want to watch the world burn. I have no option here which would not intrude on someone's freedom; sending children to their terrible death by disease is, oddly enough, the most ethical decision. Would you prefer the state simply take your children away because they disagree with your views? Perhaps you feed your kids too much meat, and they believe the unbalanced diet is physically harming them. Perhaps you told them Santa Clause isn't real, and they are worried the truth will infect the rest of first grade. Perhaps you told your 13-year-old daughter about condoms, and the abstinence-only policymakers have sent CPS to rescue your daughter from your sexual corruption of a minor who even now may be teaching her eleven- and thirteen-year-old friends to suck cocks thanks to your horrifying parenting.
Sometimes, I just want to watch the world burn.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
But at the end of the day, I have the freedom to choose my own health care, if I don't want to go to the doctor when I'm sick, that is my right.
If you are an adult you can choose your own health care but there are limits. You can be forcibly quarantined if you present a danger to public health. See Typhoid Mary for an example. You can be arrested (and should be) and charged with assault if you knowingly transmit a serious pathogen to other people. If you choose as an adult to not get vaccinated, that is your choice but that doesn't mean the rest of us should have to suffer because of your choice. If you want to quarantine yourself from society, knock yourself out. But I certainly don't want your measles.
Furthermore we are not talking about adults choosing whether or not to get vaccinated themselves. These are adults choosing for children. The children are granted no voice or advocate in the matter. Personally I'd be pissed in my parents hadn't vaccinated me against stuff like measles. Parents that choose to not have their children vaccinated despite mountains of evidence that vaccines are safe and effective are being reckless.
Why are all of you in such a hurry to hand more power over to a large government that will just use it against you?
If you can explain how you have a right to knowingly transmit a preventable, serious and highly communicable illness to me then I'll concede the point.
Do none of you study history?
I do but I'm guessing you haven't studied medicine.
Well, they're a danger to the community; their medical records should be published. We could do it like we do with pedophiles.
Interesting idea. If someone chooses to be unvaccinated (for themselves or their child) does the public have a right to know that so that they may avoid them? I don't need to know all their medical records, merely whether they have chosen to not vaccinate for select preventable diseases without a legitimate medical condition preventing doing so safely. People who cannot get vaccinated should have some way to know who they ought to avoid. I'll have to think about that one.
too bad they don't have a vaccine against opening your mouth.
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
So at what point does the liability stop?
When we aren't talking about highly communicable, easily preventable transmission of dangerous pathogens. I made no argument for anything further than that.
If I allow my kids to play on sleds or go skiing and they get hurt or killed or maimed ... should I go to jail for child endangerment for allowing them to be in such danger?
If your children are somehow endangering the public health by that choice then sure.
Furthermore, WHAT vaccines? And how often? I got one MMR vaccine I believe, but it's since been raised to two. Ought I to be mandated to get another one? What about the flu vaccine? What about STDs which I highly doubt my 8 month old will be contracting anytime soon?
All these questions are easily answered by medical professionals starting with the CDC. We have a list of common vaccines and administration schedules. Follow it. If your vaccine wears off (they do sometimes) get another one. It's not hard and its very safe for almost everyone. The CDC has guidelines for who should get the flu vaccine. Follow them and listen to your doctor.
And yes vaccines for stuff like HPV which is an STD should require a vaccine. It's widespread, preventable and causes cancer and other problems. Why do you think women get pap smears? Idiots who think it promotes promiscuity invariably miss the point. STDs require TWO people and if you don't protect yourself you are trusting others to do it for you. That's a bad idea. You might be faithful but that doesn't mean your sexual partner will be.
By the same logic.
Determined by who?
Doctors and scientists
Benefits and risks for who?
Society as a whole.
you are advocating mob rule
It is also called democracy.
that's why the US currently doesn't vaccinate against TB, while it is mandatory elsewhere.
Since we are talking about the US that is irrelevant.
HPV vaccination is morally objectionable to many people
I would say to a few people not "many".Also moral objections do not count.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts
This is a very old case, very specific and things have changed. First the precident is only applicable during an outbreak and only in the area of the outbreak. It also stated that someone could not be forced to be vaccinated but could be fined or detained.
Harlan deemed that the Massachusetts state punishment of fine or imprisonment on those who refused vaccines was acceptable but that those individuals could not be forcibly vaccinated.
Even your reference does not support forcible vaccination.
Evidently, what you're advocating is all about promoting cronyism and corruption and taking away the rights and choices of people whose views differ from the majority.
No, it supports a science based approach to protect the health of people in a large society over the small minded prejudices of a few people. There is no right to live in society and everyone has the right to live somewhere else.
BTW, A reference means an actual link.
What religion has a ban on vaccinations and do you truly belong to that religion?
The correct answer is that no, the government does not, can not, and should not try to "require" vaccination. By that I mean, they barge into your house, hold you down, and inject you over your protests. That is a patent violation of bodily autonomy; the government can't do that. So, no, America isn't going to "require" vaccination.
What it can and should do is to deny access to some public spaces to the unvaccinated. The primary example is public schools. Yes, public school students should be vaccinated according to the best practices of the medical community.
Furthermore, government should flip the legal protections currently surrounding vaccines. Instead of having laws that protect the unvaccinated from having to disclose their status, or protect them from discrimination, the laws should require disclosure and protect those who wish to discriminate against the unvaccinated. Specifically I mean that places such as Disneyland should be allowed to discriminate against the unvaccinated for hiring.
Finally, the entire concept of "religious/conscience waivers" should be discarded not only for vaccines but for all situations. Why would we have a rule which you are allowed to break if you simply say that you don't like the rule (which is what a religious waiver means)? Such waivers are facially preposterous and would be irrelevant to my policy suggestion.
But strictly speaking Mr. Christie is correct. Nobody should be "required" to receive any injections.
My neighbor's trees have termites. He has an ideological opposition to exterminators or chemicals or something. As long we don't eradicate the termites in the whole neighborhood, nearby neighbors will have to pay an exterminator every 6 months or so. Eradicating the termites from the trees generally throughout the entire neighborhood would be far more efficient and less costly. The exterminator is warning that the pesticides we used to use are becoming less effective since the termites are evolving an immunity. I'm getting pretty tired of paying for his god-given right not to exterminate.
Vaccinations don't provide a 100% guarantee of not getting an illness. They reduce the probability. If you don't get your kid vaccinated and my kid ,despite vaccination, catches measles from your kid, then you'll hear from my lawyer regarding whatever out-of-pocket medical expenses we have to pay. Oh and my kid says there may be "pain and suffering" remuneration involved.
No, Obama wasn't on the fence about vaccinations in 2008 - the right-wing news sources claiming that are disproved by the actual video of the actual talk.
But it's no wonder that people freaked out about Perry mandating the HPV vaccine (one of the few sensible things he's done.) Not only does it cost over $100, but it requires admitting that your precious snowflake teenager might (gasp!) have sex, which you know is Just Not Possible because Abstinence Only Education says they shouldn't (and teaches them not to trust condoms as well.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Most of the allergy issues with vaccines are egg allergies (many vaccines are or were grown on egg media), and they usually do have diagnosis from professionals because (unless they're vegans or Hindus), their kid was getting allergic reactions to something and they tracked it down to being eggs.
There are also kids who have impaired immune systems, typically because of chemotherapy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Informed stupidity may still be stupidity, but the places that have been requiring that "personal belief exemption" parents discuss the issues with a doctor before being allowed to use that excuse have found it's pretty effective. It doesn't stop all the stupidity, but maybe half. (I'd prefer the requirement to be "discuss with a doctor EVERY year" as opposed to just once, but it's a start.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You should consider asking this question to a parent of a mentally ill child who has the burden of taking care of a child on a daily basis with no hope for them ever "getting better". Depending on the severity of the mental illness, this could be a living nightmare...
Rand's point is that he believes the government shouldn't have the power to FORCE people to risk their lives for the benefit of others, that these life-critical decisions are personal and should be left up to the people in question
During a really nasty disease outbreak, like when Ebola showed up in the US last summer, you will quickly find that your "freedom" doesn't mean jack against the threat of you causing a disease outbreak among the general public. Quarantine by definition means you can't go out, no matter what your feelings on the matter are.
This is simply the front end of that principle.
The states in the US with the highest vaccination rates are red states and the states with the lowest vaccination rates are blue states.
If we can't be mandated to pay taxes, then there is no government. Including no army for self defense (and in my view, the army is far less important than education). No roads to get to work except toll roads controlled by corporations, no sewers or clean water systems, no police except for self appointed vigilante gangs, no legal system except for self appointed judges that you have to pay (if you can afford it). And so on.
If you receive benefits from the government then you need to pay your fair share of taxes for that. Sure it's fine to complain that the return on that investment is bad but to insist that eliminating it altogether is naive extremism.
There are also States where "personal belief" is not grounds for exemption. That is the way I think things should. Exemptions based on science are valid. Exemptions based on "belief" are not.
If you refuse to bathe your children, they could be taken from you, worldview be damned.
There is nothing harmful from taking a bath... there are no people running around saying, "don't take baths, you could end up sick or worse!"
If you choose to feed your children raw foods that are full of bacteria, they could be taken from you.
What, like raw milk? That is a sorry state of affairs that the government wants to try and ban stuff like that. While I don't care for it personally, people have been drinking it since the dawn of time.
Ok, something less out there... How about an apple? That is a raw food full of bacteria... or a watermellon, those are loaded with bacteria...
You cannot engage in harmful behavior affecting your own children or behavior that has negative consequences for everyone else, which is what refusing to be vaccinated does.
How about parents who let their kids watch TV 8 hours a day and don't teach them anything? That is harmful to society when they grow up to be unproductive members of society collecting welfare checks.
Perhaps we need government mandates of how long kids can watch TV before they are "made" to go play outside?
You cannot engage in harmful behavior affecting your own children or behavior that has negative consequences for everyone else, which is what refusing to be vaccinated does.
I'm well aware that Jenny McCarthy is an idiot who shouldn't be listened to...
That doesn't invalidate the concerns over all medication that has various side effects...
I have no problem taking medicine when it is needed, but I think we way over medicate people in this county, just look at the liberal use of antibiotics...
Or worse, the use of drugs like Ritalin and Lithium in our kids...
My religion is my business... not yours or the governments... that is the whole point of freedom of religion...
The minute you start deciding what is a "real" religion, you've just gotten yourself into the religion business, and that is completely against the constitution.
You have freedom of religion. You also have the consequences of that religion which could be not being able to send your kids to public school.
What is to stop someone from saying that their religion requires their children to carry and scatter peanuts everywhere they go? Should children of this religion be allowed in public schools even though their presence may, and probably will, kill other students?
It comes down to this a person's rights end where they cause damage to others.
The minute you start deciding what is a "real" religion, you've just gotten yourself into the religion business, and that is completely against the constitution.
The Bill of Rights states that the government can not discriminate based on religion. It says nothing about "cults", "spiritual beliefs", "strongly held beliefs", etc. It is up to the government and courts to define what a religion is. The thing is that if you want to claim your religion requires something you have the burden of proving your statements.
What is to stop someone from saying that their religion requires their children to carry and scatter peanuts everywhere they go? Should children of this religion be allowed in public schools even though their presence may, and probably will, kill other students?
That is taking an active approach to spreading a problem.
If a child actually had the measles, it would be reasonable to not allow them into school until they were healthy again.
My child doesn't have measles, so explain to me why you don't want them in school?
My child doesn't have measles, so explain to me why you don't want them in school?
Because you child can have measles and be contagious for days before the rash shows up.
What a pussy you are. We need to go to Iain M. Banks' Dweller approach from the Algebraist and hunt our children. If they can make it to adulthood welcome, if not well, fuck em.
Pirates are the cause of global warming.
(2) don't get vaccinated and be thrown into a convenient pit (or offshore island) surrounded by automated shoot-to-kill machine gun robots.
Simples!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"