Herd Immunity?

selfinflikted said:

If it is a situation that could only affect the individual in question, let them refuse all the care they want. But if it's a situation that potentially affects other people, then I say they may not necessarily have that right. Getting your arm sliced off in a car accident is one such condition that would affect only the injured party. If they refuse treatment, so be it. If a person refuses to get a polio vaccine, they are potentially harming other people, and I do mind that.




The evidence is too strong. But hopefully this "anti-vaxxer" craze will be dead and gone in another few years, so maybe it won't even have to come to that. Maybe.

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Well, either the right to privacy of your person is a Right, or it is not. If you have to get government permission for something, or if the government can mandate you do/not do it, then it is not a right.

And it seems to me the argument about "public injury" is specious: exactly how many deaths have occurred in the US from cases of measles contracted by people who refused vaccine, or from people who have refused vaccine? I know the answer to that question; do you?

hankroberts said:

Well, either the right to privacy of your person is a Right, or it is not. If you have to get government permission for something, or if the government can mandate you do/not do it, then it is not a right.

And it seems to me the argument about "public injury" is specious: exactly how many deaths have occurred in the US from cases of measles contracted by people who refused vaccine, or from people who have refused vaccine? I know the answer to that question; do you?

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Why does someone have to die for it to be a problem? What about diseases that don't kill, but make a person very ill?

hankroberts said:

Well, either the right to privacy of your person is a Right, or it is not. If you have to get government permission for something, or if the government can mandate you do/not do it, then it is not a right.

And it seems to me the argument about "public injury" is specious: exactly how many deaths have occurred in the US from cases of measles contracted by people who refused vaccine, or from people who have refused vaccine? I know the answer to that question; do you?

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You speak as if death is the only concern we should have in regards to public health.

Many people can suffer long term damage from a number of diseases we can vaccinate against, that is certainly a major impact.

But even that aside, even if it's an illness that you fully recover from, why allow yourself or your children to get sick when they didn't have to get sick?

When you factor in that someone else that you expose the virus to may suffer long term complications, your position makes no sense at all.

It amazes me how people can be so careless. With themselves and other people.

hankroberts said:

It should be noted that not all people who turn down vaccinations are denying science.

And while I firmly agree on the value of them and the importance, ultimately (in this nation) it is a matter of individual rights: each person/parent has the right to determine their own medical care. This is why, when I worked on an ambulance, I could not force medical care on someone who refused treatment, even though I knew they needed it. The law says they have the right to refuse treatment, for any reason or no reason at all.

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Rights are meaningless when diseases, do you think if there was a zombie plague, or even just mass Ebola in the us that the goverment wouldn't have the right to force imunize everyone, and lock up those individuals that are sick? Or even potentially sick? These are extreme examples, but frankly I'm sick of every time there is a movie about a plague, the goverment is shown as a badguy because they shoot people trying to flee a qurantine zone or other such things. Yes your rights to do what you want, don't equal the rights of the rest of the planet.

Now the diseases that were talking arn't on these levels, but to say that someone has rights that trump public health is silly.Should we charge someone with reckless endangerment if your not getting vacinated caused a bunch of people to die and could be shown?

Dave Ellis said:

This is more than simply personal health care though, this is a public health issue.

I love the idea that they instituted in Australia recently, and may be a good way to get around this issue.

Being able to claim a child tax benefit is tied to certain things, getting required vaccinations is one of them. If you choose not to get your kid vaccinated, then you lose the thousands of dollars in tax benefits you would otherwise be able to claim.


Edit: If your child has a legitimate reason for not being vaccinated (i.e. an allergy to the vaccine) then you can be exempted from this requirement.

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Dave Ellis said:

This is more than simply personal health care though, this is a public health issue.

I love the idea that they instituted in Australia recently, and may be a good way to get around this issue.

Being able to claim a child tax benefit is tied to certain things, getting required vaccinations is one of them. If you choose not to get your kid vaccinated, then you lose the thousands of dollars in tax benefits you would otherwise be able to claim.


Edit: If your child has a legitimate reason for not being vaccinated (i.e. an allergy to the vaccine) then you can be exempted from this requirement.

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That's a really smart strategy to encourage parents to properly vaccinate their children. The financial costs of an outbreak can be substantial to a community. I live in Los Angeles and the measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland in December has had significant ramifications throughout SoCal. Several of my friends attend Huntington Beach High School down in Orange County where a boy infected with measles from the Disneyland outbreak is a student. The telltale rash indicating the measles doesn't immediately appear, and the initial symptoms can be relatively mild and more like those of a common cold. He had no idea he was harboring measles inside of him and that he was contagious when he attended school. Two dozen unvaccinated students at HBHS were banished from campus for three weeks to help slow down the outbreak.

On the news last night there was a segment about measles at another high school here. This time 66 unvaccinated students have been banned from campus as a precaution. The school receives money from the district based on attendance. They were saying that this is going to cost them thousands of dollars a day. That means that it's not just the kids whose parents failed to vaccinate them who are impacted, but all students, teachers, and staff both in the present and in the future. The LA Unified School District and many other districts in California have been severely financially strained for years now, forcing them to make cuts to academic, art, and athletic programs due to budgetary issues.
A baseball coach at Santa Monica High has a confirmed case of the measles, and even though all the guys on the baseball team are vaccinated, the Santa Monica-Malibu School district had to send out notifications to all students as a precautionary measure.

It's not just schools that have experienced the repercussions of the anti-vaxxers's choices. The youth dance studio I train at has been impacted as well due to a student there who got the measles. Unvaccinated dancers have been asked to refrain from coming to the studio for the duration of the infectious period. The dance competition season starts up in three weeks, and when one kid in a group dance isn't in classes it impacts everyone else. Unvaccinated kids who are just recreational dancers (not at the competition level) have also temporarily withdrawn from classes, and since parents pay for those classes on a per-class basis, that takes a toll on the studio's overall finances.

The decision whether to vaccinate most definitely has an impact on the herd.

selfinflikted said:

Why does someone have to die for it to be a problem? What about diseases that don't kill, but make a person very ill?

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Sorry, but that is a sad attempt at misdirection. No one here said people have to die in order for the issue to be of significance.

But if you are going to violate the individual's rights, then you must have an extraordinary reason. At least, in this country. (I keep adding that because I realize not everyone here is from this country, and the rules are quite different elsewhere.)

See post # 28.

"zombie plague" ... Really? Really?

hankroberts said:

Sorry, but that is a sad attempt at misdirection. No one here said people have to die in order for the issue to be of significance.

But if you are going to violate the individual's rights, then you must have an extraordinary reason. At least, in this country. (I keep adding that because I realize not everyone here is from this country, and the rules are quite different elsewhere.)

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I'd say public health is a very compelling reason, it's the same reason why private buildings sometimes are condemned if they do not meet health and safety codes.

selfinflikted said:

It amazes me how people can be so careless. With themselves and other people.

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And it amazes me how often people can be so careless of the rights of others.

The protection of the downtrodden is ever the cry of the tyrant, eager to grasp at a man's liberty.

Thomas Jefferson said that "The idea is quite unfounded that upon entrance into society we give up any natural right."

"I'd say public health is a very compelling reason, it's the same reason why private buildings sometimes are condemned if they do not meet health and safety codes. "

Ah, but a building has no inherent rights, does it?

hankroberts said:

Ah, but a building has no inherent rights, does it?

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The property owner does.

You do not have the right to threaten the health and wellbeing of other people in society.

Dave Ellis said:

The property owner does.

You do not have the right to threaten the health and wellbeing of other people in society.

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Thomas Jefferson said that "The idea is quite unfounded that upon entrance into society we give up any natural right."

hankroberts said:

Thomas Jefferson said that "The idea is quite unfounded that upon entrance into society we give up any natural right."

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Correct, and you don't have a natural right to put in jeopardy the health and well being of others.

Dave Ellis said:

Correct, and you don't have a natural right to put in jeopardy the health and well being of others.

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But you do have a right to your own privacy and to determine your own medical care. We're going in circles here.

hankroberts said:

But you do have a right to your own privacy and to determine your own medical care. We're going in circles here.

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Sure, and if you make the choices to not vaccinate your kid, you should lose your tax benefits.

Having the right to make choices doesn't free you from the consequences of your actions.

It is a false argument that the rights of individuals must be subordinate to the “rights of society”, because society has no rights. According to the Founding Fathers, rights are inherent in the individual, who is endowed with those rights by his Creator. Society is merely a group of individuals who associate together, and have no such inherent rights within the social group, other than those of the individuals themselves.

When one tries to impose limits on the rights of individuals in the name of the collective, they are presuming that the group has some rights not invested in the individual, or that the group has rights of a higher order than those invested in the individuals in the group. This is an unwarranted presumption: no such rights exist.

The rights which a man has are inherent: the government may acknowledge these rights; they may enforce these rights; and they may defend these rights. But by the decree of the founders of our republic, the government has absolutely no authority to countermand, to interrupt or to remove those rights, under any circumstances.

The founders were clear that they would rather risk the potential disadvantages to a society from the greater liberty of the individual than to risk the potential disadvantages to an individual from any restraint of personal liberty. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “The Law is often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” He also said “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too little.”

hankroberts said:

And it amazes me how often people can be so careless of the rights of others.

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Giving careful consideration to how the exercise of rights by some impacts the rights of others in a society isn't being careless at all. It's benevolent, civic-minded responsibility rather than tyrannical oppression.

Adults are legally entitled to smoke cigarettes. Their rights to do so have limitations because they infringe upon the rights of others. Smoking in the majority of workplaces, schools, restaurants, public places, and the like are banned or restricted due to how secondhand smoke impacts others. Licensed drivers have the right to put their cars on the road, but they are not at liberty to drive however they please with impunity. Most hospitals require their medical staff to get the flu shot for the protection of their patients. The right to bear arms comes with legal responsibilities. The private school I attend now required proof of immunization for enrollment. The college I'll be attending in the fall also requires all students to have certain vaccinations as a condition of enrollment. That's standard for most colleges because each unvaccinated student compromises herd immunity. Rights are not being disregarded just because they are not unlimited.

Whether to properly vaccinate your child is a decision made by individual parents, but it has profound medical, financial, and emotional ramifications on many others in addition to impacting their own children now and in their future. It's not the parents who have gotten measles, but their children and other people's children who've gone through the agony of that disease. I know some of the kids at HBHS, a high school in SoCal that has been impacted by the measles outbreak. It is not the parents who have had to stay at home for three weeks, banished from school, athletic practices and games, club meetings, and social activities, but the teens. It's not the parents who are paying for the revenue the school loses each day kids are absent, but the taxpayers.

Measles is not just a misery-inducing rash and inconvenience, but a serious disease with the potential to cause fatality and permanent disability. My stepmom and dad are both physicians who volunteer with a medical relief organization every summer, and have seen the horrifying impact of this disease. They treated a toddler-aged girl in rural Peru villagers had described as diabolical and even demon-posssesd because of her wild tantrums and disobedience. They didn't realize that she never listened to instructions because she was deaf and with very poor eyesight as a result of her mother having measles while pregnant with her. Outside of America and other affluent countries rarely is it a matter of parents choosing not to vaccinate themselves and their children, but of their inability to do so. My job when I tag along on missions is to play the ukulele and keep the kids entertained in the very long lines they stand in to get vaccinations.

Here in California there are people whose rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are compromised by the rights of parents to not vaccinate their children. In a previous post I explained how my brother's unvaccinated playmate gave me chickenpox when I was a baby already in fragile condition due to being born premature, and how that led to sepsis and a hospital stay that terrified my parents. I still have health issues 17 years later. The parents of a six-year-old boy with a very fragile immune system from four years of battling leukemia have made a request that the school ban unvaccinated children to protect him and other children who are incredibly vulnerable. I'm sure there will be parents who will yank out quotes and puff up about their individual rights and refuse to cooperate with having their children vaccinated despite the knowledge of the risk of that decision. I wish people would think less about individual legal rights and more about doing what is right, responsible, and fair for self, family, and society.

To get this thread back on topic, herd immunity is very much real, and it is dependent upon individual duty and cooperation. I believe we need to discuss the science of herd immunity here more than the history of one country, and focus more on conscientious responsibility than on than legalities.

ETA: My sister Tweeted this link to an explanation for herd immunity tonight: http://www.health.harvard.edu/multimedia/herd-immunity-animation