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Australia To Ban Unvaccinated Children From Preschool (newscientist.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: No-jab, no play. So says the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who has announced that unvaccinated children will be barred from attending preschools and daycare centers. Currently, 93 percent of Australian children receive the standard childhood vaccinations, including those for measles, mumps and rubella, but the government wants to lift this to 95 percent. This is the level required to stop the spread of infectious disease and to protect children who are too young to be immunized or cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Childcare subsidies have been unavailable to the families of unvaccinated children since January 2016, and a version of the new "no jab, no play" policy is already in place in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Other states and territories only exclude unvaccinated children from preschools during infectious disease outbreaks. The proposed policy is based on Victoria's model, which is the strictest. It requires all children attending childcare to be fully immunized, unless they have a medical exemption, such as a vaccine allergy.
I'm unsure banning children of uneducated parent is the best course of action...
Elok
Around here kids are banned from school(primary and secondary) if they don't have up to date immunization records, or a reasonable reason to why they're not immunized(i.e. severe reactions). Considering the absolute shit that happened a few years back with multiple measles, mumps and rubella, not to mention whooping cough outbreaks, it's nothing but a good option.
If there'd been a chickenpox vaccine when I was a kid, I would have taken it. 2 weeks of absolute shit, and it nearly killed my one sister(who spent 6mo in ICU). All because some little shit stain and their parents decided that it was a good idea to have their kid out in public while infectious.
Om, nomnomnom...
I'm one of those *few* parents who had a child that was allergic and could not be vaccinated against one of the more virulent diseases. Fortunately, when she was older she outgrew that allergy and is now current on all her vaccinations. As a parent, sending my daughter to school where others CHOSE to not vaccinate their children thereby risking exposing mine to something nasty was a hard thing to do. I felt like I was living in the dark ages where being a part of any group could be anywhere from bad to a death sentence.
We might say that the parents who decide not to do the right thing are simply "dumb," or, as I called them, "*(!^*(&^!*%**'s." Time has taught me otherwise. In the US and elsewhere, many people aren't taught or don't remember basic scientific method. They have no idea what the difference is between doubting what they have been told, and actually engaging in critical, productive, thinking. STEM is important, but perhaps we should require those who can't handle it to take something more akin to STEM lite. Barring that, penalties for parents who refuse to take care of *OTHER PEOPLES CHILDREN* shouldn't be frowned upon. IMHO.
You can't deny nearly a fourth of the kids from education. Of course the Republicans here want to do that since they're anti-science and support mandatory vaccinations.
Arrest the parents for child endangerment. The foster homes will get the kids vaccinated and they'll get an education. No reason to tolerate child abuse.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
In my experience it's not necessarily uneducated parents. Uneducated parents, if they have access to a pediatrician, are apt to follow his or her advice. It's educated parents who question, and the miseducated ones question and come up with bad answers.
What we are looking at in the anti-vaxxer movement is Emersonian self-reliance run amok. We've succeeded in teaching a generation not to put blind trust in authority figures, but without an interest in STEM for its own sake and with limited critical thinking skills, they have no choice but to turn to alternative authorities, individuals who embody everything that should be feared in an authority: deviousness, venality and ruthlessness.
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However, after educating myself on this specific topic, the only question I have is, "why pull the individual vaccines from the market if they work?"
Because nearly all parents are going to opt to vaccinate for measles, mumps AND rubella, and combining them means you give your kid two doses of vaccine instead of six.
Why not leave them as an option for parents who prefer that approach?
Because the market of parents who'd prefer to give their kids six vaccine doses rather than two is too small to profitably serve.
They took away the proven safe alternatives that had worked for decades.
Actually, that's not true. MMR was introduced in 1971, and by now has a much longer safety record than the individuals vaccines it replaces: Attenuvax (Measles, 1961), Mumpsvax (1967), and Meruvax (Rubella, 1969).
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Vaccines can be used to eradicate measles, we just haven't tried.
Vaccines have eradicated smallpox and are on the verge of eradicating polio (42 paralysis cases worldwide last year, so far this year we're running at 1/3 of last year at the same time, 3 vs 9 cases.)
In terms of eradication, smallpox had everything going for it: an effective cheap vaccine, no animal reservoir, obvious symptoms, and the political/social will to make it happen (because it was such a terrible disease.) By comparison, polio can circulate without obvious symptoms, making it hard to eradicate.
Measles eradication has everything going for it that smallpox did, except for the will. People who think measles vaccines are dangerous should campaign for measles eradication. Their children will get the vaccine, but their grandchildren and every later generation until human extinction will not.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.