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Comment by wjsetzer | Hacker News Reader

I can't understand why vaccinations aren't mandatory for non-allergic, non-immunocompromised children at this point. You shouldn't have the option to kill your kid, and especially others' kids.

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My guess is that enough people did it without requiring a law. Laws can be costly to implement (additional bureaucracy) and are prone to edge cases. Better to just let it be while it works.

But now it does not and we may require laws unless the misinformation can be quenched soon.

You could fit it in with child abuse laws already?

I'm in the UK that has lost eradication status. Before I could claim my children weren't in danger because its eradicated. Now it isn't and am now exposing my children to a clear danger.

Is it not analogous to letting my children play with the bleach under the sink?

Forcing people to undergo medical treatment is ethically questionable at best. It's an extremely heavy measure to take.

So no, cost is not the reason and I think it's a bit scary that that's the best reason you could come up with.

I'm as sceptical of antivaxxers as most of HN, but I'm appalled at the level of support for forced medical intervention in the comments here. That's the stuff of dictatorships.

For that reason the laws don't make vaccinations mandatory, they make it illegal to enter public schools without a vaccination. Limiting dangerous activities in public places is accepted by most as a valid function of government.

I consider people who vote differently from myself to be a threat to my safety. Acting on that opinion is not a good idea.

The question isn't 'can we rationalise this?' - we can rationalise everything. The question is 'is the threat great enough for the government to start infringing on liberty?'. It probably isn't, otherwise we'd ban all hard and soft drugs (including alcohol & smoking) as a similar level of threat to public health. That battle has been fought and lost by the public safety folks.

An incentive program would probably be a good idea, but I expect there is already one in place.

Actually nuance is given close to the proper level of attention. You may drink yourself to death but some controls are in place to reduce the chance you’ll run someone over via drink driving. You may smoke but not in places where you might be fumigating others involuntarily. Etc.

It’s all about managing th externality.

Vaccination is not treatment. And we are being "forced" to undergo much more than that which is in our interest: filtering of air and water, food quality regulations and so on.

> That's the stuff of dictatorships.

I think that’s over the top. The most legitimate argument for forming governments is the management of externalities. It infringes on the factory owner’s liberties to restrict their dumping of toxic waste into the river.

Likewise vaccines and quarantine are ways to limit the spread of dangerous pathogens.

Abortion has externalities. However, we've decided that individual medical autonomy over one's body is sacred.

What externalities are you talking about? I fail to see how forcing women to give birth to children would do anything positive for society: either you'd have to force them to raise them, which would result in tons of children being raised by single mothers who don't want them, which doesn't sound like a very good environment (and also violates individual autonomy) and would have a lot of negative economic effects for society, or you'd end up with tons of kids in foster homes or orphanages, which would also have lots of negative economic effects for society, both for the costs of institutionalizing these children, and then later all the social problems they'll cause when they grow up and become criminals.

There are no real negative effects for vaccination, as long as you don't force them on people who have genuine medical conditions preventing them from taking them safely (e.g., allergy to vaccine components).

Externalities on the fetus.

Not necessarily a fan of forced vaccination, but a little remark to further the discussion:

Unlike most medical interventions, vaccination is not about one's individual well-being, but more about the protection of the entire population, especially other, more vulnerable individuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity).

This is why some vaccines are recommended even if you're not especially in danger, because they help protect others that may not be able to be vaccinated (because they are too weak, or due to a special reaction to the vaccine etc.)

Not saying that it means that forced vaccination is morally justified however! But the question of vaccination is definitely not simply about individual choice in regard to one's own health.

Thought experiment: a government is faced with a problem, where they have to either force people at gunpoint to get a vaccination for a deadly disease, or the society will utterly collapse because too many people stupidly refuse to get this vaccine because of unfounded fears spread by some people who have a financial interest in doing so and don't understand the societal consequences of this (a pandemic is coming and it will wipe out most of the population). Is it right for the government to force vaccinations in this case?

Also, an interesting note: if you join the military, you have to get vaccinations. You're not allowed to opt-out.

Yeah I don’t know. I thought people in the US were/are abusing the religious exemption option (which states are rescinding). How are European patents skirting immunization requirements?

They just say "no". Apart from looks of despair and despise from their pediatrician nothing will happen.

It's not about children. Majority of new cases are older adults (immunization failed after ~ 25+ years).

Define older adult - an age range please.

According to this [1] non-immune adults in the UK can get vaccinated, if born between 1970 and 1979, and hence got the single measles vaccine, or between 1980 and 1990 and hence missed the mumps vaccine.

However what about those of us born before 1970 (measles vaccine licensed in UK in '68), and so presumably never vaccinated against any of the three?

That would leave people of 50 and older, and viewed as having "life long" acquired natural immunity. So presumably not vaccination failure amongst them.

So is the "older adults" only referring to some age < 50, who were vaccinated, and that vaccine immunity has now faded?

Edit to add - there are age / year statistics available here [2], which lumps everyone >= 35 in one bucket. Which may imply these "older adults" are actually people between the ages of 35 and 50.

[1] - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/mmr-vaccine/

The section "MMR for non-immune adults".

[2] - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-confirmed...

In France, it is mandatory. Still, there is some cases of measles because of anti-vax that go against the law...

From the article:

> Ms O'Brien said all four European nations that have lost their eradication status have "extremely high" vaccination coverage.

Oddly enough, England hit one of the WHO's vaccination targets (95% of five year olds having received their first MMR vaccination) for the first time ever just a couple of years ago. Not just since Wakefield and co (though they certainly didn't help) but in the entire history of the vaccine.

Given how recently democratic western governments have conducted eugenics programs, I would be uncomfortable with any law that enforces mandatory injections for children - even for vaccines.

The cutoff isnt at injections here. Its way past that somewhere between vaccine and poison.

Your comment does not make any sense, what's the link between Nazi eugenics programs and vaccination campaigns?

One reason people refuse vaccination is that they are worried the vaccines are secretly an attempt to sterilize undesirable segments of the population. For example, see what happened with the tetanus vaccine in Kenya in 2014.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tetanus-vaccine-sterilizat...

Although rare, vaccines can still have negative side effects, sometimes very severe ones, even in healthy children. I think that state shouldn't have the right to kill your kid, however small is the chance. As for children who can't be vaccinated and have to depend on collective immunity, they are as big danger as antivaxxers' kids. You wouldn't force it on the first group, what gives you right to force it on second group?

Just a reminder that Measles also has negative side effects, and refusing a vaccination may force it on someone else less able to withstand those effects.

Obviously. But the question is to whom do you feel you have bigger obligations - to yourself/your kid or some rando?

Related neighbour thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20837940

I would feel very sorry if I (or my children) infected somebody else with an easily preventable disease. And I would be super pissed if "some rando" did it to me!

Measles can still have negative side effects, sometimes very severe ones. Measles causes grave neurologic damage in approximately 1:10^5 and death in approximately 1:10^6 of naive children. The complication profile is far worse in adults. That's far more than the vaccine. What do you prefer?

Dunno why you think that I am antivaxxer. I tried to represent other, in fact quite valid point of view. Personally I would obviously prefer vaccine. But even more I prefer right to choose and not having government's decisions forced upon me.

Well no, the point of view you exposed has no logical basis. It stands on the fact that vaccinating one particular kid makes this particular kid at higher risk compared to others. Given that the herd immunity threshold is not achieved in most kids' communities, this results in a false assertion by a wide margin regarding risk of severe disability or death. It would be a true assertion if you argued an increased risk of minor symptoms or complication.

No. Your assertion is wrong because it assumes where does given person live. I'm from country where are measles considered eradicated and there it's completely valid strategy. If you're from country where is 1 case of measles in million each year, combined with the risks of severe harm as you listed, you'll find out there is orders of magnitude higher chance of being hit by lightning than suffering from adverse effects of measles.

Ok, we disagree based upon numbers. However, "eradicated" status just means "not endemic any more" really, and unvaccinated individuals tend to cluster in communities. Plus, the herd immunity threshold for measles is 95% and the chance of living in a community above that is certainly much lower than you think. Including in your country.

It's annoying how you keep assuming facts that you know nothing about. I happen to live in country where vaccinations are mandatory and parents have to go through significant trouble to avoid them. That incidentally means the chance of living in such community is much bigger than you think.

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