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Hundreds Rally For Their Right To Not Vaccinate Their Children (msn.com)
CBS News reports that as Washington state confronts a measles outbreak which has sickened at least 56 people, "hundreds rallied to preserve their right not to vaccinate their children."
They packed a public hearing for a new bill making it harder for families to opt out of vaccination requirements, reports The Washington Post: An estimated 700 people, most of them opposed to stricter requirements, lined up before dawn in the cold, toting strollers and hand-lettered signs, to sit in the hearing.... The Pacific Northwest is home to some of the nation's most vocal and organized anti-vaccination activists. That movement has helped drive down child immunizations in Washington, as well as in neighboring Oregon and Idaho, to some of the lowest rates in the country, with as many as 10.5 percent of kindergartners statewide in Idaho unvaccinated for measles. That is almost double the median rate nationally....
One activist who spoke Friday, Mary Holland, who teaches at New York University law school and said her son has a vaccine-related injury, warned lawmakers that if the bill passes, many vaccine opponents will "move out of the state, or go underground, but they will not comply."
The sponsor of a similar bill in Oregon says that anti-vaxxers "have every right to make a bad decision in the health of their child, but that does not give them the right to send an unprotected kid to public school. So if they want to homeschool their kid and keep them out of other environments, that's their decision."
But there are still 17 U.S. states that allow "personal or philosophic exemptions to vaccination requirements," reports the Post, "meaning virtually anyone can opt out." (Though some states are now considering changes.) "The enablers are state legislators in those states, that have allowed themselves to be played," complains Dr. Peter Hotez, a co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
The World Health Organization estimates that measles vaccines have saved over 21 million lives since 2000. But last year in the European region's population of nearly 900 million people, at least 82,600 people contracted measles, reports Reuters. "Of those, 72 cases were fatal."
They packed a public hearing for a new bill making it harder for families to opt out of vaccination requirements, reports The Washington Post: An estimated 700 people, most of them opposed to stricter requirements, lined up before dawn in the cold, toting strollers and hand-lettered signs, to sit in the hearing.... The Pacific Northwest is home to some of the nation's most vocal and organized anti-vaccination activists. That movement has helped drive down child immunizations in Washington, as well as in neighboring Oregon and Idaho, to some of the lowest rates in the country, with as many as 10.5 percent of kindergartners statewide in Idaho unvaccinated for measles. That is almost double the median rate nationally....
One activist who spoke Friday, Mary Holland, who teaches at New York University law school and said her son has a vaccine-related injury, warned lawmakers that if the bill passes, many vaccine opponents will "move out of the state, or go underground, but they will not comply."
The sponsor of a similar bill in Oregon says that anti-vaxxers "have every right to make a bad decision in the health of their child, but that does not give them the right to send an unprotected kid to public school. So if they want to homeschool their kid and keep them out of other environments, that's their decision."
But there are still 17 U.S. states that allow "personal or philosophic exemptions to vaccination requirements," reports the Post, "meaning virtually anyone can opt out." (Though some states are now considering changes.) "The enablers are state legislators in those states, that have allowed themselves to be played," complains Dr. Peter Hotez, a co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
The World Health Organization estimates that measles vaccines have saved over 21 million lives since 2000. But last year in the European region's population of nearly 900 million people, at least 82,600 people contracted measles, reports Reuters. "Of those, 72 cases were fatal."
Call CPS, have them come get the kids. It's a danger to themselves and to the public safety. Enough with these loony tunes who think it's their right to endanger their offspring and the general population.
... then they should pay for the public health costs that arise because of their decision. It is a welfare of the community issue. Laws are often made to protect the community from the bad decisions of individuals.
... of those who contract measles, and their insurance fees should reflect that added risk.
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Only by making the costs or either decision transparent, you can address both the unfounded and the founded fears of vaccinations risks versus non-vaccinations risks.
While the benefit of the measles vaccination seems obvious to most, actual scandals surrounding other vaccinations have cast shadows of doubt on just every vaccination, especially for those who do not differentiate.
One tragic contemporary example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
BACKGROUND: The largest measles epidemic in North America in the last decade, occurred in 2011 in Quebec, Canada, where rates of 1- and 2-dose vaccine coverage among children 3 years of age were 95%-97% and 90%, respectively, with 3%-5% unvaccinated
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
I see in your sentence that somebody faked some studies. That doesn't connect it to religion anywhere but in Logical Fallacy Land.
In the interest of the actual topic at hand, though, here's a comprehensive timeline.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I didn’t read the article, but I’m pretty sure Slashdot cut the headline off early. I’m not sure how it was supposed to end, but I have a few guesses:
Hundreds Rally For Their Right To Not Vaccinate Their Children...
...measles outbreak ensues
...thousands expected but had to stay home with sick children
...in what turns out to be the largest CPS sting in history
...casket futures soar
...millions mourn the demise of reason
...immigrants ask if they can fill the upcoming vacancies
...then find that their doctors refuse to see them
...Doomsday Clock moved closer to midnight
...last surviving Iron Lung users gather to protest rally
I was going to add:
...pastor tells them to “stop being stupid”
But that one actually happened after a measles outbreak in Texas a few years back. The pastor who pushed an anti-vaccine agenda thankfully had the sense to tell everyone to go get vaccinated once the people in their community were getting sick, since the immediate harm was of significantly and obviously greater concern than the fictional harm they were all worried about.
The Anti-Vax Movement is not a left/right issue. Instead, it is correlated with extremism in either direction. Right-wing nutjobs see vaccines as a government conspiracy. Left-wing nutjobs see vaccines as a corporate conspiracy. Moderates on both sides vaccinate their kids.
Anti-Vax beliefs don't follow the usual political polariization
The point is, you have to make your case to convince others to believe as you do. Sending cops around to arrest them instead is a well-worn path to dystopia.
So is letting willfully ignorant tools spread disease. What's the lesser of evils, here?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would like to challenge you all to find some empathy in your heart
It is not a virtue to have more empathy for parents who experience modest intellectual discomfort because of their own wilful ignorance than for the victims who suffer physically because of the former's irresponsible choices.
If you judge everything by your feeling of empathy for one particular person without 1) considering impacts on others, and 2) considering impacts in future as well as impact in the present, then your value system is seriously deficient.