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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.
Wonderful. Good on ya, Australia. Outside of very uncommon medical situations, there is no damn reason for anything less than this. It's a goddamn embarrassment that there are fracking measles outbreaks in the 21st goddamn century, much less that they're getting larger and occurring with increased frequency.
Vaccines save lives. Full stop.
This is a great idea. I'm sad that kids with stupid parents cannot get into school, but it's not worth risking all of the other kids, especially those who cannot get the vaccine due to medical reasons.
This is a great idea. I'm sad that kids with stupid parents cannot get into school
This is to do with day care for pre-schoolers, I don't think we are at the stage where we are going to stop kids attending school. Even the link in the above story to the Australian Anti-Vaccination Network --a link to the AVN ... FFS editors, how about here instead?! --doesn't make that claim.
The Federal policy in force at the moment is the "no jab, no pay" policy, meaning that parents of unimmunised children are not eligible for childcare related tax rebates etc.
This is not a ban from primary or secondary schools, only pre-school and day-care facilities where the concentration of children with less developed immunity is high.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
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...
In my Grandparents' generation, the recruiting posters said, "your country needs you" and people signed up to fight in a *war* to protect their families and communities, and many of those people didn't come back. Now we simply ask that you get a couple tiny jabs to protect your family and community from some of the most terrible diseases imaginable, and people think there's too much risk. Yes, there's a *tiny* risk, but you still choose to drive little Johnny all over town to soccer practices and birthday parties, putting your precious cargo at far higher risk of death from a car accident than any risk from the vaccine, and then there's the fact that your child is now much more likely to get those diseases. It's literally ridiculous.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
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.
It's not uneducated parents that are the problem. It's a lot of middle-class mothers who are totally convinced by the pseudo-science and rubbish that's peddled on the internet and by "Wellness" gurus. Australia seems to be infested with them.
Someone has just been hammered for this.
The Paleo Diet is alive and well here, pushed by a chef who somehow has become a dietary-science expert and made a mint from pushing books that contain dangerous pseudo-diets.
We also seem to be very susceptible to charlatans spruiking special-cancer treatments that do nothing but give false hope, drain someone's bank account and leaves them dead quicker.
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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You a troll? This guy didn't say "I got mine screw you". He served the community by taking a risk and getting himself and his kids vaccinated. That's the exact opposite of "got mine screw you".
What he's saying is, "I contributed to the public safety at some small risk to myself and mine, SCREW the people too selfish and cowardly to do the same!"