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

Posted by Soulskill on from the welcome-to-the-worst-leg-of-the-campaign-cycle dept.

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."

17 of 740 comments (clear)

  1. Backpedalled? by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Backpedalled? by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Backpedalled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Backpedalled? by kogut · · Score: 5, Informative

      How can an unvaccinated kid infect and kill your child if your child was vaccinated?

      No vaccine is 100% effective. So "herd immunity" still marginally benefits the vaccinated.

    4. Re:Backpedalled? by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Backpedalled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re: Backpedalled? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    7. Re:Backpedalled? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Backpedalled? by mjwx · · Score: 5, Informative

      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 who cannot be vaccinated due to medical reasons and rely on herd immunity for their safety, or infants who are to young to be vaccinated..

      Fixed it a little bit for you, but I agree with you so much. Choose not to vaccinate your kids and face the consequences: I don't want unvaccinated kids in my child's daycare, preschool or school. The government mandates that I take my child to school, and I have every right to expect that her safety is taken care of. That includes the threat of unvaccinated children.

      No vaccine is 100% effective. Even vaccinated kids can contract a disease they've been vaccinated against. The risk is much lower (vaccines are over 99.9% effective) but its still a risk. In the recent measles outbreak at Disney that had 95 confirmed cases, at least 6 were confirmed to be vaccinated against measles.

      This is one reason I'm glad that in my country, Australia, an MMR vaccination (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) is mandatory unless you have a damn good reason not to get one (and being an idiot isn't good enough).

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    9. Re:Backpedalled? by Bengie · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    10. Re:Backpedalled? by jklovanc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. But Rand Paul says by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rand Paul says vaccines cause mental illnesses! I guess that explains libertarianism.

    1. Re:But Rand Paul says by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nixon is a liberal by today's standards.

  3. Re:Citation needed. by Squiddie · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics... I searched your italicized quote there. First result.

  4. Re:Only if they pay for infections this causes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Demagoguery by sycodon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  6. The most important vaccine by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.