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Comment by caio1982 | Hacker News Reader

caio1982

Just a sidenote from the other side of the world: Brazil has been offering free HPV vaccines for girls under 15 for a while and since last year to all boys at 12; they plane to have it available to both sexes between 9 and 15 in the next couple of years. It is estimated that nearly half of young people (16-25 years of age) have some form of the HPV in the country. I don't have any results numbers to share or source from now, however, my apologies. Let's hope Australia is not the only country to do that though!

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Australian parents lose their childs tax benefits if they refuse vaccination, it's an enormous incentive (thousands per year) for the average wage earner.

The article seems to not mention this.

Sadly it still doesn't stop entire communities of well-off antivaxxers forming, these particular areas are now ravaged by whooping cough outbreaks, a disease that was almost eliminated ten years ago.

So basically, only people that are rich AND dumb fall though the cracks?

So what percentage are we talking? Single digits, I hope.

Considerable numbers of parents in wealthy suburbs have not vaccinated their children:

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/melbournes-antiv...

The next pressure point will be that if parents don’t vaccinate their children, child-care centres will be forced to refuse to take children. This will actually work because the vast majority of these wealthy suburbs have both parents working, and they must use child care.

You ultimately _can_ force enough people to stop taking the piss with laws. It mostly ends up being about whether you can convince parliament to pass the right ones. I like to think we (Australia) get it right at least some of the time.

Kinda dropped the ball on the NBN though, and it was entirely over politics, not reasonable policy.

Yes, not our finest hour. Particularly now that the conservatives have gotten their way.

They completely dropped the ball on the NBN. That is almost completely Tony Abbott’s Gault. He will always be known as a wrecker.

I don't know about in Australia, but here in NZ it's illegal to deny access to public schools or other state funded institutions based on vaccination status. I'm not sure about private schools though.

They had to pass a law in Australia to take away benefits if you didn't vaccinate, and they could pass a law if needed regarding childcare too.

Australia does have a variety of no-jab, no-pay programs to promote pediatric vaccines, but I believe HPV vaccine (which is given later) is not included in them

May have not been the case before, some angry politicians have managed to tighten up tax and conscientious objection laws in the last few years.

So HPV vaccine is now on the national immunisation program which your child must be up to date with to claim family tax benefits.

https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/enablers/immuni...

Texas tried to make it mandatory in 2007, under Gov. Rick Perry no less. Unfortunately, a combination of anti-vaxxers and social conservatives sunk this initiative using a combination of innuendo and shaming. In 2011 [1], one observed the shameful debacle of him reversing himself while begging for votes for his first presidential run.

Nowadays, Texas shows up in the news for the converse reasons: alarming growth in maternal mortality during childbirth [2].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rick-perry-reverses-... [2] http://time.com/5088014/maternal-mortality-pregnancy/

Same (possibly different ages) in Canada (Alberta at least), it's not mandatory, but offered in school, and most people go with it.

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