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Comment by saulrh | Hacker News Reader

How about "Thou shalt not spread deadly diseases by leaving yourself unvaccinated", by analogy to "Thou shalt not spread deadly diseases by selling tained food" or "Thou shalt not spread deadly diseases by leaving your hair out when you're working in a restaurant's kitchen"?

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By leaving yourself unvaccinated, you are bearing the risks of contamination. The risks that someone else takes leaving themselves unvaccinated is up to them.

There are people who can't be vaccinated, and instead depend on everybody near them being vaccinated so the disease can't spread to them, so leaving yourself unvaccinated is not a risk only to yourself. I, for example, have a family history that means I can't take the usual meningitis vaccine. I am depending on the people around me getting vaccinated, and if they don't, they push to me a risk of becoming infected, exactly like someone who doesn't wash their hands after using the restroom won't make themselves any sicker but can infect me. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudenc...

Now, imagine if due to the incompetence or corruption of government and pharmaceutical companies, you were forced to be vaccinated with a meningitis vaccine anyway (or risk punishment), even though you and your doctor protests there will be dangerous side effects. That's a situation that will happen to some if people are forced to vaccinate. They may or may not be right about the side effects, but to them, it will feel exactly like as if you yourself was forced to take the meningitis vaccine even though you feel very sure it will not be in your best interests. It's probably worth forcing that situation on everyone around you for your own family's wellbeing - but I think it's still worth pointing out the suffering this will cause others.

That suffering is caused by ignorance, not a vaccine.

Except that herd immunity is a thing.

That's not how vaccination works. Even if I get all my vaccines, there is a chance one of them didn't work for me. Then when people start getting sick and spreading it because not enough of us are vaccinated, so do I.

They work by having the vast majority of people not carriers so that the few that don't end up protected directly are still protected.

This is sorta like having shitty brakes and tires. Sure you're the person most likely affected but there's a good chance your accident is going to mean harming someone that does have good brakes and tires.

Adding conditions to commercial activity isn't the same thing as imposing conditions on existing.

"Thou shalt not do anything that could cause a huge fire". "Thou shalt not build buildings that could fall down in an earthquake". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_safety#List_of_some_typic... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_code

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