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New York City Orders Mandatory Measles Vaccinations in Brooklyn (providencejournal.com)
"New York City officials on Tuesday declared a public health emergency and ordered mandatory measles vaccinations" in an area where most of the state's 285 measles cases have occurred. The Washington Post reports:
New York's mandatory vaccination order in four Brooklyn zip codes is by far the toughest action to date by state or local officials, as the disease's tally grows to 465 cases in 19 states. Officials there and elsewhere have sought to bar unvaccinated children from schools and other public places but have had limited success... The mandate orders all unvaccinated people in four zip codes to receive inoculations, including children as young as 6 months. Anyone who resists faces a misdemeanor charge and could be fined up to $1,000.
Long-time Slashdot reader Major Blud shares a BBC report that under the order, "any person living in the affected areas who has not been vaccinated must be immunised within 48 hours."
Long-time Slashdot reader Major Blud shares a BBC report that under the order, "any person living in the affected areas who has not been vaccinated must be immunised within 48 hours."
If you are vaccinated, shouldn't you not have to worry about getting measles? Only the un-vaccinated will be affected? Where is the problem?
It's just that.
In a dense dystopia like NYC, you can't do squat without messing up someone else, that's one of the psychological costs of that unsustainable life. You probably need tighter gun laws, restrictions on everything, as what you do impinges on others almost no matter what.
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However, those of us who chose not to "enjoy" the "benefits" of living like rats in a cage, would prefer to keep our freedoms intact, not needing the restrictions to protect our neighbors as the big-city folk do. Small towns, with little or no anonymity, tend to eject the kinds of people who make NYC dangerous, and SF a place full of homeless, poop and needles in the public spaces. It doesn't take the cops to do this, or really any proactive action by the other citizens. It's just enough harder to make it that losers leave on their own.
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Often one of the first comments of people who visit my place from some other country- say one in the EU, is how vast the US is, and how utterly varied from place to place. They fly into an airport 60 miles from here in a big city with the usual reprobates and nasty pollution and congestion, and an hour later they are in unspoiled nature like they've never seen at home. This is why one size fits all, and centralized government in general might be a crappy idea. Sure, there are cases where one size IS a decent fit, but mission-creep is inevitable and a function of human nature - governments always become larger and less accountable if it's possible to do - if for no other reason than to create more warm seats under a manager seeking a raise...
A slap on the wrist? My uncle got caught once, lost his drivers license for 6 months, had to goto 30 AA meetings in 30 days. Then had to do 60 hours community service. Total cost: 20,000k out of his pocket in fines and lawyer fees.
Slap on the wrist my ass.
Impaired driving kills a lot of people. Over the last decade, chemical-impaired driving deaths have changed little, but the ratio of chemicals involved has changed.
Cannabis, which is becoming far more socially acceptable than it used to be, is replacing alcohol as a primary factor of impaired-driving crashes. The last traffic safety conference I attended had a break-out session on impairments, and cannabis is now involved in MORE crashes now than alcohol.