Italy bans unvaccinated children from school | Hacker News Reader

Italy bans unvaccinated children from school

bbc.com

145 pointshackr_nj123 comments

I'm a physiologist, and definitely NOT an anti-vaxxer.

Two points:

1) What is the specific list of immunizations that are being mandated?

2) If immunizations are to be mandated, great, however the companies that produce them must also be mandated to be transparent in their research and development.

For example, they must be required by law to publish all studies on drug safety-- both positive, and negative results. That's currently not required, they're allowed to cherry-pick results!

Me either, but I've always wondered:

3) What danger do un-vaccinated children pose to vaccinated ones?

They don't, un-vaccinated children pose a danger to children who can't be vaccinated for medical reasons.

It's herd immunity but it only works if the vaccination rate is sufficiently high.

The problem is some people with weak immune system cannot be vaccinated. So it's also for protection of these people.

The generally pose the most danger to those either too young to be vaccinated, or who can't be vaccinated due to legitimate medical concerns. This is not uncommon, and such children rely on the herd immunity of their peers.

Further, as few vaccines are 100% effective, the herd immunity also limits the exposure of viruses to those for whom the vaccine was ineffective.

Makes sense, thanks.

Vaccination doesn't 100% guarantee immunity, so there is always a % that isn't immune. Each disease requires a different % immunity to prevent a wide-spread outbreak, i.e. to provide herd immunity. For particularly aggressive diseases it requires 95ish% immunity to avoid an outbreak.

So with anti-vaxxers increasing from roughly .5% to 1.5% over the last 10 years or so, that introduces a significant increase in the requirement of vaccination effectiveness, to the point where you wonder are we close to herd immunity breaking down.

In places with significant anti-vax sentiments, such as ultra-orthodox religious practices you will get those larger outbreaks of things like measles.

In general I think research indicates in the general populous anti-vaxxer populations are still small and disparate enough as to not impact herd immunity, but the trend has been upward due to the anti-vax trend over the last decade.

[source] am married to an M.D. that specialized in microbiology, recently listened to a good NPR bit about it that dropped the statistics, and I stayed at a holiday inn express last night.

Seems like a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

>For example, they must be required by law to publish all studies on drug safety-- both positive, and negative results. That's currently not required, they're allowed to cherry-pick results!

Why? The alternatives in pretty much all cases are death. Which side effect is better than your child being dead? Or mine for that matter because the collective you (not you personally) decided that risking polio was better than the 1 in 10 billion chance you had an adverse reaction to a vaccine.

We've literally eradicated diseases that could have wiped out the entire human race and now we've got idiots trying their hardest to bring them back.

If parents want to have the "choice" to vaccinate their children, then they should also be held legally liable for ANYONE that gets sick as a result of that choice. Whether it's their own kid or an outbreak in the area they live.

> Which side effect is better than your child being dead?

This is a very simplistic view given the probabilities involved. For a drastic example, consider a hypothetical treatment that can perfectly prevent a disease that would otherwise kill 1% of those who are treated, but it will blind 100% of them. It's hard to argue that this is a better outcome.

But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about available vaccines and none of them cause blindness. And the rates of death are far higher than 1%. The probabilities involved are ridiculously in favor of vaccination. Literally the exact opposite of what you claim.

Making up completely ridiculous examples to just justify anti-vaxxer idiocy should stay on Facebook.

<< We're talking about available vaccines and none of them cause blindness.

Quick Google Search: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22989339

“Reversible blindness in bilateral optic neruritis associated with nasal flu vaccine.“

Reversable - the tiny chance of a reversable condition vs contributing to the death of others. Can you be more selfish?

Previous comment 1) Burden of proof 2) Single cause

You 1) Moving the goalposts 2) Illicit Major 3) Ad hominem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

> The alternatives in pretty much all cases are death.

Is this a serious claim about currently-required vaccines? Including the one for varicella, say?

Vaccines have a _lot_ of benefits; my kids are certainly vaccinated for all sorts of things (including varicella, though that was a bit of a tough call for me). But overselling those benefits with blanket claims like "the alternative to being vaccinated is death" is not a good way to get the "everyone should be vaccinated" position to be taken seriously.

> Why? The alternatives in pretty much all cases are death.

This seems like a huge exaggeration to me. There's a chickenpox vaccine nowadays which wasn't widely available when I was a kid. As a result, my siblings and I all contracted chickenpox at one point or another. Chickenpox is only very rarely a serious illness for children.

Even with regard to more serious illnesses that have been made rare by vaccination (measles and mumps), death is quite rare (less than 1% according to wikipedia).

Overall, I find your tone a bit disturbing. I'm very pro-vaccine, but I sometimes wonder if a kinder, gentler approach wouldn't be more effective. When you yell at people, they are much less likely to listen to you. When you use dishonest arguments like you've done here you just provide anti-vaxxers with ammunition.

Some diseases are not a big deal for most children but can outright kill others. They are sometimes really dangerous to any adult and typically all kinds of immune compromised people. Herd immunity is in some cases the only way they can be protected.

> Some diseases are not a big deal for most children but can outright kill others.

This is exactly what I wrote, isn't it? The person I was responding to wrote:

> The alternatives in pretty much all cases are death. Which side effect is better than your child being dead?

I'm not arguing against vaccinations. I'm arguing against exaggeration.

My point is that even if a disease is not dangerous to everyone it is worth to vaccinate everyone so that the rest benefits from herd immunity. In the cases where a disease is not dangerous to most children but dangerous to most adults things are even more complicated because once you have vaccinated sufficiently many people the disease becomes rare so it is more likely that someone unvaccinated contracts it as an adult.

> Some diseases are not a big deal for most children but can outright kill others.

And some vaccines are not a big deal for most children but can outright kill others.

Don't you think a scientific view of the cost/benefits of vaccines should be common narrative?

That’s an interesting idea. Make it so anyone who knowingly goes into a public place with a contagious illness is held legally responsible for it.

I agree. There are currently a lot of problems with vaccine development transparency and the chain of custody in handling of the vaccines is non existent. Yet someone is paying for this major social media propaganda push that anti-vaxxers are all low IQ deplorables who kill their own children. In parallel the fact that everyone should be forced to be vaccinated regardless of any other concerns is pushed as a sane rhetoric. Next thing they will be saying is that government conducting experiments on people (like the Tuskegee Study) never happened and it’s all just conspiracy theories.

I don't know that it's paid for right now (though it could be, there is a huge financial upside). Do you have anything concrete for that assessment (as opposed to just angry/bored people on the internet looking for something to get mad about?) ?

"Yet someone is paying for this major social media propaganda push that anti-vaxxers are all low IQ deplorables who kill their own children."

Why would people be paying for this? There are probably millions of people out there who would be willing to say something similar without payment.

Because it ostracizes 'anti-vaxxers' as a group and creates a 'them' or 'us' mentality.

Vaccines aren't 100% safe, there's been something like $4 billion paid out in compensation for them, and to get compensation you have to legally absolve them of liability and keep the media out of it!

But by pushing the narrative and ridiculing anyone who asks legitimate questions the pharmaceutical companies bury that and no-one wants to be branded as an 'anti-vaxxer' so they keep their mouths shut.

https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/data/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...

It's very similar to how the tobacco industry (and the sugar industry even earlier and the coal companies) manipulate the media take this study for example: ( https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/vaccines-autis... )

They studied 650,000 people. But injuries from vaccines are about 1 in one million, so the study was designed to fail but it got the press coverage!

edit: formatting

As a counter point: Vaccines aren’t a big profit center for big pharma. They are expensive to develop and most people need only one to three shots for 10 years or a lifetime.

On the other hand, there is hormonal contraception, which is indeed a great profit center, because people need it every day (or a hormonal IUD, which is good for 3-5 years, but also a lot more expensive).

And now read news reports about all the nasty side effects of the pill. There was a big shift around 2016 and since then, there are media reports all the time. Nothing is put under the carpet here, although I think, economically speaking, it would make much more sense to “manipulate the media” that hormonal contraceptives have no side effects than manipulating the media about vaccines.

And the number of people affected is even less than with vaccines (only women in a certain age and not all of them vs. basically all children and many adults). So it should even be easier to manipulate the media about the non-existence of side-effects of the pill (of which stuff like thrombosis is deadly).

I know, just because one thing isn’t manipulated, everything about vaccines could still be manipulated, but I don’t buy it. Follow the money – doesn’t seem that lucrative.

The "push" to show anti-vaxers as idiots is probably not a coordinated effort. Standard human behavior explains the wave of anti anti-vax (and anti-flat earth) memes, news stories, and social media posts already. These are both unpopular outgroups that people can make fun of with little to no social repercussion. Many people use the "bullying" (for lack of a better word) of outgroups as a way to make themselves feel superior and to fit in with the larger in-group. If someone is paying for the effort, they are wasting their money.

I don't know why you are getting voted down for this comment, but it seems that anything that questions vaccine safety, even if completely rational and reasonable is being shut down on social media.

This would be a good start. For some reason there is this irrational belief that there are no side effects or ill-effects from vaccines.

There are a number of doctors I have heard from that say vaccines can cause all kinds of debilitating side effects. But even "questioning" the status quo will get you down-votes, ridicule and draw ad homenim attacks.

How many of those doctors lost licenses or were otherwise rebuked?

Here's two on youtube, do you think they present valid scientifically based views or should they be rebuked and/or have their licenses revoked?

If you disagree with these doctors, why?

Dr. Richard Halvorsen (England)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMs1ue8j9CM

Dr. Suzanne Humphries (USA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFQQOv-Oi6U

Fantastic (note that the article mentions (or at least hints at) medical exemptions, which of course makes sense)! Now ... if only we could make this happen here in the US!

If that's what you want, don't wait for the institution of a national policy. Talk to your local Board of Education.

I don’t think they have the power.

I'm no expert on this topic, but a brief google search produced this document which suggested to me that they often do:

https://www.nyccharterschools.org/sites/default/files/resour...

I do see that this is for a system of charter schools, but don't see why that should make a difference.

Or the state, as happened in the case of California. There appears to be some abuse of medical exemptions but, for the most part, the California law requiring childhood vaccinations to attend school seems to be working and overall vaccinations are up. [1]

[1] https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/20181127calif...

On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, this isn't a thing that should have to be a board of ed policy. At least where I live, the school board is unpaid volunteers, and it's already an absolutely thankless job. People I know who use Facebook tell me that the group for moms of local school-age kids is an absolute swamp of rage and misinformation. And if you've ever been to a series of school-board meetings on the same topic, you've probably seen the one angry community member who shows up every time to accuse the school board of corruption, incompetence, and lying to the public.

> if only we could make this happen here in the US

Good point. Also essential to ban adults from various public areas who are not up to date on all their boosters.

First we need to make sure everyone has reasonable access to the medical care that would provide those boosters.

And how would you enforce that? Have everyone walk around with their immunization records and stop people randomly?

You could start with places with admission like sports, music, and theme parks.

I understand the serious issue of ensuring immunization. But you do realize how your comment might come off on the fascist side of liberty, right?

> if only we could make this happen here in the US!

Hmm, isn't it already required in US? When I sent my son to first grade this year they asked us to verify that we have all the necessary vaccines, without it they would not allow us to register.

IIRC, many school districts have allowed conscientious objection to vaccination requirements.

Or religious exemptions, which it seems have become a catch all category in some places.

School requirements are at the state and local level, so your results may vary.

I wish I could find the article - apparently there is one guy/group actually working on expanding the religious exemptions and has lobbied legislators in a bunch of states to file bills for it. So dumb that the legislators go along with it.

Edit: another dumb things are legislators looking to prohibit discriminating against unvacinated people. https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article2109815...

It's determined by each region. Here in Oregon/Washington we have medical exemptions, religious exemptions, and plain old "I just don't agree" exemptions (aka: personal exemptions). Hence why we had such a widespread recent measles outbreak.

Some states that refused (i.e. failed) to set up their own health care exchanges because they did not want to comply with the ACA have Medicaid programs that do not cover low-income adults. If you were deprived of vaccines as a child then you should be allowed to visit the doctor and schedule a series of vaccinations to catch up without paying a copay. It seems wrong to federally ban something without a federal solution.

There may be ways to get vaccines without coverage that of which I am not aware. How would you even get someone to review your record without being in a network, though? OK, KS, MO, MS, TN, AL, GA, SC, NC, FL, VA, UT, ID, WY, ME, WI, NE and SD have no medicaid coverage for low-income adults [1]. That is probably not a complete list.

1. https://www.medicaid.gov/state-overviews/index.html

While that is definitely a bad thing, the issue is about children. Children are covered under CHIP even if their parents don't get coverage under Medicaid.

IMO this should not be a federal issue. Each state or school district can set their own rules (thus provide the option to parents).

This would pretty much make everyone happy. As most regions would setup the rules to best protect their children.

Now, I'll point out this is effectively is already a thing. You cannot attend school in many locations without getting your vaccines and / or providing a valid reason why you needn't have them. This is the beauty of living in a system which supports state rights. Similar to how Italy and France can set their own laws, so can the states in the U.S..

Inconveniently, it might need to be a federal issue, as communication of disease does not respect state boundaries.

About time too. Hopefully the UK and rest of Europe will follow suit.

Or, sadly soon, the UK and the EU ?

The rest of Europe =/= the EU.

Heck, I need to bring paperwork before I drop my dog off at doggy daycare proving he's up to date on his shots, makes sense for kids as well as fur-babies.

As I mentioned the last time this was posted, the article title is clickbait. The actual ban only applies to children under six. That is to say, hardly any of them. Parents of older children will be fined.

"Children up to the age of six years will be excluded from nursery and kindergarten without proof of vaccination under the new rules.

Those aged between six and 16 cannot be banned from attending school, but their parents face fines if they do not complete the mandatory course of immunisations."

there's a reason however: the limitation comes from our constitution and changing that requires a supermajority that hardly any government had in the last decades.

Art. 34. La scuola è aperta a tutti. L'istruzione inferiore, impartita per almeno otto anni, è obbligatoria e gratuita.

"(public) schooling is open to everyone" "primary instruction, covering at least eight years, is mandatory and free of charge"

there's both the right and the mandate to get all children into school, changing that is something that has been evaluated and still under discussion because it will be very hard to put an amendment in there that's both general enough to cover the issue at hand but not so generic that it might be exploited in the future.

As an Italian I don't want that article changed for ANY reason. The possibility to exploit any conditionality in art.34 both as an excuse to avoid mandatory education and for privatization of the public school system is really too high. Public schooling must remain free and mandatory without any exemption or special case.

That is actually an interesting case, if you have a child with severe immunity deficiency, should you be forced to send them to a public school with vaccinated children?

They will have problems with United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "26. The Right to Education. Education is a right. Primary school should be free. ..." Since primary school is a human right, nobody can ban you from primary school!

Which is why those parents get fined instead. Actually reading the article helps.

There is an even better incentive: make the parents accept liability for any medical costs caused by their unvaccinated children. Because their principles matter more than money, right?

That would probably be illegal too. I'd have picked a heavier fine, personally.

Providing a safe environment for children to learn enhances their access to an education. Having a child's classmates up to date on their vaccines is a great way to promote a safe and healthy learning environment for everyone (especially the immunocompromised).

Schools can require proper attire, #2 pencils, and textbooks while not running afoul of the UN DoHR. Same should go for proper vaccination.

I don't see how this should require any country to allow dangerous children into schools.

Suppose some parents insist on sending their kid to school with a gun. Should the government be required to accommodate this kid? Obviously not: the government is perfectly within its rights to set limits on things, and not allow kids to attend who are a clear and present danger to the other children. Kids carrying guns are obviously a danger, so they're not allowed. Kids who are unvaccinated are also a danger, so they shouldn't be allowed, though with a high enough vaccination rate we can make an exception for someone with a valid medical reason.

The government isn't preventing these kids from attending school; the parents are.

In Portugal since like late 80's at least, when you're being signed up in the school you have to present several documents, and one of them the Vaccines Bulletin.

If it's not up to date, you cannot be registered.

It's a better solution instead of banning children. It might seem like it's the same thing, but it's quite different.

We have something similar in the states but problem is there's a lot of exceptions people can claim, such as religious or "personal beliefs" - which pretty much makes it completely useless. They need to shut down those exemptions.

Same in Cyprus. Every year you need to submit a registration form and the vaccination booklet. They will ask you to get any missing vaccines.

I would be interested to know if any Italians (or otherwise knowledgable people) are here who can comment on this anecdote:

I once stayed with some Italians near Pisa, who were home schooling their children. They said that corrupt and ignorant politicians have added unnecessary vaccines to the list of requirements, due to lobbying/collusion with pharma companies and as a way to influence elections. As a result, some parents decided to home school their children, so in turn the government said that any home schooled children who don't have these vaccines cannot take the official exams.

Edit: these were not my "friends"! Very nice folks but this one triggered my BS detector. I never looked into it, and this story reminded me.

Not even sure you can home school children in Italy. I don't think so, schooling is mandatory up to a certain age. Anyway, I've never heard of anyone doing it.

You can, but only terrible people do it.

EDIT: keep in mind that the public school system will bend over backwards to integrate and accomodate even the most problematic special needs children. It's among the few things that it does really well.

I don't think HN is the place for judging people you've probably never met.

Son of teachers. I'm familiar with the issue at hand (there is basically no reason to homeschool in Italy unless you are in a cult or neglect your child heavily).

This is the US, but an op-ed from a favorite novelist of mine in favor of homeschooling: https://www.salon.com/1997/10/01/01school/

I was not homeschooled, but I hated school (even though it was a good public school) and if people want to educate their own children, they should be able to.

> no reason to homeschool in Italy unless you are in a cult or neglect your child heavily

Doubling down? I know plenty of kind, loving people who are actively involved in home schooling and are not affiliated with any cult or religion. I know plenty of wonderful families who choose public school and wonderful families that choose home school.

I think there's more depth and diversity to people who home school than you might be know of. Some choose to travel the world and expose their children to the amazing biological and human diversity of this planet. What an amazing way to participate in your child's growth and build tolerance for people who think and act differently than you do.

As a general rule, it's best not to disparage an entire group of people. I'd be really careful with declarations like those as they can lead to very dehumanizing schools of thought.

Do you live in the United States? I get the impression that the intellectual climate in grade schools in the USA is vastly more problematic (not that it's spotless here).

Ok, I've checked. Apparently it's possible through some very loose interpretation of the law and some additional, and relatively recent, act of the government, which among other things mandates that the parents providing homeschooling need to prove their "financial and technical ability" to do so. Which sounds pretty unlikely since the public school teachers are pretty specialized. In practice in Italy it's such a marginal phenomenon that the law is simply providing a loophole for a tiny minority of very combative people who prefer to give to their children what is ultimately a worse education (if you just wanted to add to the education provided for free by public schools nobody prevented you to do so anyway).

In any case these kids need to go through a yearly exam to check on their progress and move to the next "class".

Edit: I add what seems to me a very reasonable sentence of the European Court of Human Rights, that upheld Germany's ban on homeschooling:

"children are unable to foresee the consequences of their parents' decision for home education because of their young age.... Schools represent society, and it is in the children's interest to become part of that society. The parents' right to educate does not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience."

Having attended a public school where is was bullied and my time wasted by terrible teachers, I would have been much, much better of being home schooled.

There's no requirement or limitation to become a private school, taking part of a public exam at the end of each cycle is sufficient. I think homeschooling would fall under being a really really small private school.

but it's weird since the passed law is only about children before the primary cycle.

there's an impeding lawsuit that might change that, however italian case law is case by case, it's hard for precedents to become case law since there's no equivalent here afaik

I am Italian. Those people were anti-vaxers. That's a typical conspiracy theory among them.

Just so that you know, vaccines are the most cost effective form of public health intervention and the profit margins on them are thin, it would not make any sense to do what they told you. The election part is obviously insane.

For more detail, look up the Five Star movement and comedian/populist hero Beppe Grillo: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/11/rise-of-italia...

I was certainly suspicious of their claims but I did not know that was typical anti-vaxer rhetoric. Good to know, thanks.

> They said that corrupt and ignorant politicians have added unnecessary vaccines to the list of requirements, due to lobbying/collusion with pharma companies

FWIW, This is standard anti-vaxxer rhetoric in any country. You see stuff like this anywhere: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeS7VhVWsAABZOJ.jpg

Did not know that to be common anti-vax rhetoric, thanks.

When you say "rhetoric" do you mean it is not true then?

Yes, of course it's a complete fabrication. Big Pharma would pick something with actual profit margins.

I have Italian relatives and I've heard a lot of questionable conspiracy theories or urban legends out of them. Things like all corner grocery stores that are run by Asians are really property of the Chinese mafia, or that if you have moving air on your throat at night you'll get a sore throat.

Point is, take this kinds of conspiracy theories with a huge grain of salt. I would love to hear which required vaccinations are allegedly unnecessary.

It's bad enough that there's a word in the language (in English, it translates along the lines of "behindology") to refer to Italians' pseudoscience of looking for the actual story that hides BEHIND the apparent reality. Granted, it might be rooted in decades or centuries of lies, but it still boils down to conspiracy theories.

What's the word?

https://bilbosrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/dietrologi...

Can we have schools for the unvaccinated?

Lol fuck yes

Last month, an eight-year-old recovering from cancer was unable to attend school in Rome due to his weak immune system.

The child had spent months receiving treatment for leukaemia, but was at risk of infection because a proportion of pupils in the school had not been vaccination

Even vaccinated kids can be carrier of patogens. BBC should have better level.

True, but vaccine preventable diseases are often far worse and far more contagious then other diseases.

I find it interesting and also confusing how invested random people on the internet are about the outcome of vaccination (which could theoretically cause an issue for a small percentage of the population), as opposed to say climate-denial (which will undisputably cause a much bigger issue for the entire population)

No one has an investment in Polio that they would lie to protect. There are no Measles lobbyists.

I'm invested because I'm planning on having a kid. For the first year of my next kid's life there is no vaccine that can protect him/her from disease, except everybody else getting vaccinated.

If I understand correctly, nursing can give some immunity.

Note well: I am not a doctor. I don't even play one on TV.

It is statistically significant, but it still isn't much: odds are against the baby who gets disease.

Because lack of vaccination is a really easy problem to fix, via vaccination. Indeed we have already succeeded in doing this many times in history. So it’s stupider and more frustrating that these diseases are coming back.

By contrast combating climate change is a huge and complicated problem with or without climate deniers screwing things up.

Where most people who comment on HN live, deaths from climate change are a future possibility. Deaths from vaccine preventable illnesses are happening right now.

Also, solving climate change is a massive undertaking. Vaccines are a solved problem.

I'm not saying it isn't a legitimate, serious issue. But the echo/amplification effect in some corners (i.e. primarily Reddit and HN) is really fascinating. Kind of a "I feel strongly about a thing, because so many people I interact with feel strongly about the thing" sort of thing.

Of all the worthy issues out there today, I'm not sure why Reddit and HN has fixated on this particular one to the extent that they have. But I'm fairly sure that validation-reward effect helps to ratchet up the intensity. You tend to receive a lot votes, likes, etc for commenting in agreement, and I suspect that feedback loop has an impact.

Once again, not speaking in opposition here (God forbid! Pitchforks down!). It's just interesting to watch classic "flash mob" and "moral panic" cycles play out in the new medium.

Maybe because there is nothing stupider than having people die from from preventable diseases due to bunk science?

Again, pitchforks down -- devil's advocate, but why is the topic not open for any discussion at all? Isn't that what defines a religion?

Deprogramming people from anti-vax lies is hard, it's impossible for everyone to be an expert on the immune system and to grasp the nuances of the policy issues involved. Uninformed layman level discussion of the issue spreads lethal memes.

Absolutely. I usually associate the mob mentality over goofy stuff with Reddit (e.g. being mad at some video game company over microtransactions).

I wish somebody could figure out how to channel that passion into the larger issues that face us today.

Preventing climate change or even fighting its effects goes against a way of life people can't imagine giving up. It's a much harder sell. And people hope for solutions where they don't have to change their ways. So while vaccination has a known, cheap, and widely accepted solution, there is no such thing for climate change. There is no easy fix. It will cost us dearly, one way or another.

The thing with vaccination is that it's a small thing that really improved our lives. It's what brings down child mortality a good notch with little effort. We can't allow misinforemd people to take this away from us. The parents that don't vaccinate their children not only endanger their children but other people as well. As long as we haven't eradicated a disease, we have to spend ressources on the vaccination.

Success story: Polio 2 is eradicated. And there's only two countries (Afghanistan and Pakistan) where Polio is still endemic. Once these contries are clear, we'll be able to sunset Polio vaccination worldwide.

So while I may deplore inactivity regarding climate change, I'm really happy we're eradicating diseases. And I'm happy people care about it.

Honestly, what they need to do is that if a parent refuses to vaccinate their kids, the parents should be given a life sentence in prison, and the kids should be given vaccines and new parents.

If the option to keep the kids out of school exists, people will take it. Half-measures like this are still going to result in more and more people dying of measles, whooping cough, and maybe even polio.

It seems that some of the same arguments for mandatory vaccination of people also apply to mandatory upgrades for Windows. E.g. if an exploit is rarely open it would be more rarely attacked, thus giving the herd of Windows computers a kind of immunity, somewhat protecting computers that for whatever reason, can't be upgraded.

Is it therefore reasonable to legally mandate updates or anti virus software for popular operating systems?

Also, since operating system customizations have the potential to defeat such protection, is that valid grounds to ban unapproved changes?

Preventing unnecessary deaths of children is not exactly in the same class of severity as preventing a computer from running malicious code in my opinion.

I dunno. Stuxnet and the general use of networked computers to manage things like nuclear reactors or power distribution networks would beg to differ.

The problem with this law is that there are children (like the child with leukemia mentioned in the article) who are unvaccinated for good medical reasons. Hopefully this law recognizes that and does not penalize children who are unvaccinated for reasons beyond their (or their parents') control.

Those people are exempt, the law was drafted for their benefit among other considerations.

The current government would probably like to get some anti-vax votes and makes noises for them, but fortunately it's too scared to blamed if some kind of epidemic happens to actually reverse the policy.

I doubt anyone will force a kid that risks losing his life because of vaccination, to vaccinate. Let's not spread FUD

Maybe they will out of incompetence. "I wish I could give you an exemption, but the computer doesn't let me fill it in like that".

In the USA, we have the idea of "informed consent" with regards to medical treatments. The ideal standard is that the doctor tells you what you have, and what ways there are to treat/manage it. Doing nothing is also an answer.

Vaccines are no different: some vaccines have some rather nasty side effects. Except in this country, under 42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22,

"No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings."

Obviously vaccines don't cause autism. But there are cases in which they do have risk past simple dermatitis reactions. So why are those who are saying "No" being lumped in with "vaccines cause $___" unscientific know-nothings?

Because ultimately it doesn't matter if they don't want their child to get vaccinated because they've determined the personal risk isn't worth the societal reward or because they think vaccines will steal their kid's soul. The result is the same.

Doing nothing is an option even in a state like California. (As it should probably be.) The child just can't attend school (absent a medical exemption).

Child neglect laws mean parents consenting on behalf of their child are held to a higher standard than adults consenting on behalf of themselves.

See Morrison v. State, 252 S.W.2d 97 for example.

That law nearly convinced me vaccines were dangerous (after all, why do you otherwise need the law), but the issue is that juries were far too eager to award damages for useless cases, so it would have been unprofitable to make vaccines.

There seems to be glut of pro-vaccine news lately. Is it because a expert CDC witness came forward in 2019 to state that sometimes vaccines can cause autism?

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