SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A small but increasing number of children in the United States are not getting some or all of their recommended vaccinations. The percentage of children under 2 years old who haven't received any vaccinations has quadrupled in the last 17 years, according to federal health data released Thursday.
Overall, immunization rates remain high and haven't changed much at the national level. But a pair of reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about immunizations for preschoolers and kindergartners highlights a growing concern among health officials and clinicians about children who aren't getting the necessary protection against vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, whooping cough and other pediatric infectious diseases.
The vast majority of parents across the country vaccinate their children and follow recommended schedules for this basic preventive practice. But the recent upswing in vaccine skepticism and outright refusal to vaccinate has spawned communities of undervaccinated children who are more susceptible to disease and pose health risks to the broader public.
[...] The data underlying the latest reports do not explain the reason for the increase in unvaccinated children. In some cases, parents hesitate or refuse to immunize, officials and experts said. Insurance coverage and an urban-rural disparity are likely other reasons for the troubling rise.
Among children aged 19 months to 35 months in rural areas, about 2 percent received no vaccinations in 2017. That is double the number of unvaccinated children living in urban areas.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday October 12 2018, @05:03AM (19 children)
The real solution is that the state be able to compel parents to get their children vaccinated.
One of the roles of a state is to impose sacrifices and actions to individuals for the greater good, that the individuals wouldn't usually do by themselves. Case in point: states raise taxes that nobody wants to pay, and spends it on things nobody really wants, like the military, for the greater good of society as a whole. Most taxpayers grumble when they have to pay up, yet understand the concept.
Vaccination should be one of these state-imposed things. Anybody who knows anything about the history of contagious diseases and how some of them were forcibly eradicated without asking anybody's opinion on the matter should agree.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:38AM (2 children)
How can something be for the greater good when nobody really wants it?
Diseases were eradicated through strictly voluntary means; WTF are you talking about?
-------
Anyway, the concept that taxpayers understand is this:
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
They understand that when someone does a service for you, then you pay them in return according to an agreement made in advance, otherwise nothing works. Unfortunately, that's not what's happening when the government taxes you. That's not an agreement in advance; rather, that's coercion at the point of a gun, and it tends to be arbitrary and capricious.
Fundamentally, the U.S. experiment in governance is that the government is NOT supposed to be all powerful; the government is supposed to be restricted as much as possible, with its sole role being the protection of each individual's innate, Universe-given rights, chief among which are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (i.e., pursuit of self-interest).
So, no. It is a mistake to think of the government the way you do. The government should facilitate the voluntary interaction between people, including their on-going debate about vaccination, and their right to associate or to disassociate or to seek a remedy for some duly processed grievance.
If your solution is based on coercion, then you are building a house of cards on a foundation of sand.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:58AM (1 child)
I think GP is talking about REALITY, where diseases that have actually been eradicated required forced vaccination in many parts of the world. Read about the eradication of smallpox sometime -- while a lot of vaccination was voluntary, it definitely would not have been eradicated only through voluntary means. In the early 1900s even in the U.S., "vaccination raids" where police would show up in the middle of the night and forcibly vaccinate lots of people and literally tear infected children away from mothers to quarantine them... Well, they happened more often then we like to talk about today.
But through those efforts, smallpox incidence decreased enough that by the time courts ruled such actions illegal, the U.S. was on the way to eradication. Similar scenarios played out around the world in lots of places.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:20PM
good luck trying that now you stupid authoritarian fucks. we'll fucking exterminate all you motherfuckers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:44AM (1 child)
The US's insanely bloated military budget and illegal foreign wars are not for the greater good, I assure you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday October 12 2018, @06:46AM
FTFY - there must be an explanation for which those things happen and, IMHO, that's a very probable one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Friday October 12 2018, @07:59AM (5 children)
How? I mean really, how are you going to do this? There are anti-vaxxers out there willing to use armed force to "protect" their children from vaccination, how are you going to make this happen?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday October 12 2018, @04:46PM (4 children)
Strictly as a practical matter, if they break the law, the police come. The police are armed, and there are more of them available (either immediately or eventually) than any family can muster despite how invested they are in whatever thought process that causes them to resist vaccination.
This is no different than if I started shooting a gun through the walls of my house in random directions. I might not shoot a neighbor doing this; then again, I might. Society doesn't allow it, and society should not allow it, and if I do it, the authorities will come for me and force me to stop, using armed force as required. As it should be.
Considering that anti-vaxxers are directly raising the risks of non-consenting others, including other children, to contract disease(s) A(,B,C...), it seems entirely appropriate to force them — as a matter of public safety, prevention of random spreading damage to the economy, and for the good of their offspring and the offspring of non-consenting others.
As to the last, I'm very much for "let the parents raise children as they see fit", but we don't let parents chain their children up in the basement or hang them in bundling bags, either, and I'm on board there. There have to be rational limits, and this issue is even worse: Not only are they putting their own children at direct physical risk, they are also putting others, including other children, at direct physical risk without the consent of those others, those children, or their parents.
I am all for liberty. But one person's liberty has to stop when it infringes upon the health and well-being of others. Otherwise, we're not talking about liberty any longer, but instead, about imposition of force — the very antithesis of liberty.
There's a terribly slippery slope indeed in forcing parents to raise their own children in any specific way, and dealing out laws there should be done with the utmost of care and reservation. However, this issue is not on that slope. This issue lands well and truly on the doorstep of raising the risk of severe harm to non-consenting others and so is an entirely appropriate area for legislation of use of force for non-compliance. It's imperfect, but it's better than the alternative of your children and/or others dying or being crippled because some few citizens can't be bothered to understand (or are incapable of understanding) the science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @06:23PM (1 child)
you don't get to use indirect things like risk to claim my rights violated yours, you fucking lying piece of shit. i'm not responsible for nature. if your goddamn vaccines worked you'll be fine. and your stupid little slave children will be fine too. nevermind the leukemia, bitch ass whore.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday October 12 2018, @10:02PM
Wrong. When you cause a direct risk to others, and you could have prevented or minimized that risk, society most certainly does. See the example of shooting blindly through one's home's exterior walls. It's exactly the same sort of thing.
There is no case under any sane model of liberty that can support that kind of use of blind force.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday October 12 2018, @11:02PM
Shoot somebody with a gun, no limit to your liability. Get sued, go to court, pay big damages. And possibly criminal charges. You kill somebody, maybe Death Penalty.
Shoot somebody with a bad vaccine, VERY VERY LIMITED liability. Very special vaccine court, they call it the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. That one's a Ronald Reagan number. They call it "no fault." You kill somebody, it's $250,000 MAX. Not a lot, folks. And it's been a disaster for our Country.
So many babies & kids getting sick from the vaccines. So many of our beautiful young people. Some dieing. Some damaged for life. And the manufacturers & doctors get away with it. Sad!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 13 2018, @05:15AM
*sigh*
How about some math? Let's say that 4 children in 100 are NOT vaccinated against - ohhhh - let's say measles. At some point in those children's lifetimes, there is a measles outbreak. It spreads - and affects that 4%. Your child, who has had all his vaccinations, is unaffected. Among that 4% of children who were not vaccinated, some remain unaffected. Some others get measles, and get over the measles, just as I did when I was a child. Some small percentage of that 4% are left with more serious complications. And an even smaller percentage of that 4% die from very serious complications.
Now, tell me - how are you and yours put at risk? You and yours have all been vaccinated, and are immune from the consequences of the 4% actions.
What do you care?
A far more serious concern is polio. Polio killed a lot of people every single year in this country, until the vaccine was developed. (Sorry, I'm not searching for numbers.) Polio crippled and maimed even more people, every single year, in this country. People my age should be able to remember cripples who were victims of polio. I remember two, and I remember the women chattering like magpies about all the dead and disfigured from their own childhoods. My parent's generation feared polio, and my grandparent's generation feared it even more.
Today - kids don't even get polio vaccines. I might make a case that the entire country, the government, it's citizens, and all of the medical community are being negligent. Polio has NOT been eradicated worldwide. It is very possible that polio finds a vector, and returns to the United States - or any other nation in the world. It would only take a very small number of people - perhaps even one person - to contract the disease, then pass through the United States during his/her infectious period. WHAM! In a matter of weeks, we have a million (or more) cases of polio.
How about this idea: Living has risks. Your risk of dieing of measles, or rubella, or any of those things we are commonly vaccinated against is your risk. You may manage your risk as you see fit. Allow others the right to manage their own risk.
Have YOU been vaccinated for polio? If not, do I have the right to demand that you get vaccinated? I was vaccinated - in - uhhhhh - I think it was 1960. You should be too!
(Score: 1, Troll) by ledow on Friday October 12 2018, @08:52AM (7 children)
Please name three human diseases that were forcibly eradicated by ANY vaccination program whatsoever.
Because there are only two in all of recorded history, one of those was only in animals and the other still exists in labs (which is how the last death occurred), and we think might be making a comeback by some convergent evolution from related strains.
Literally, the world has only ever eliminated smallpox and rinderpest.
That's *IT*.
Anyone who knows anything about the history of contagious diseases also knows that. And that smallpox is not only still around, but around to enough that the last two people who died of it were lab researchers studying it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:07AM
Are you serious?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication#Timeline [wikipedia.org]
1975 — 49,293
2017 — 22
Also, just to quell any illiterates out there (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication#Vaccine-derived_poliovirus) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:40PM (1 child)
I don't think GP meant worldwide eradication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diseases_eliminated_from_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday October 12 2018, @11:36PM
I looked at the first one. The Yellow Fever. After 1905, no more Yellow Fever -- except from IMMIGRANTS, they call it imported. But vaccine started in 1938. No vaccine until 1938. Nobody asks, why did Yellow Fever stop in 1905? Why did that one go away? I don't know, maybe nobody knows. I'll tell you, it wasn't vaccine. Because, they didn't have vaccine yet. Not for a long time. About 33 years, right? And probably it was CLEAN LIVING. But, sick & dirty immigrants kept coming in. 1996, they were bringing Yellow Fever. When Bill Clinton was in charge. And our boarders were out of control. We had open boarders. And it was a disaster!!!
Listen, ALL Dems in Congress -- every last one, even Joe Manchin -- signed the Open Boarders Bill. Written by Dianne Feinkenstien. Fortunately they don't have the votes to pass that one. But if we lose control of Congress, if they get the seats, Open Boarders will be the FIRST thing on their agenda. For the new, and horrible, Congress. We need to stop that one -- or it's the END of our Country (Treason). VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:29PM (3 children)
Careful. "Eradication" doesn't mean what you think it means anymore:
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/is-india-actually-free-of-polio/article7945687.ece [thehindu.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @02:16PM (2 children)
You're denying the antecedent.
Poliovirus is not the only cause of flaccid paralysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @02:38PM (1 child)
Yes, how interesting that the rates of non-polio AFP rise as the rates of polio-AFP drop. Almost as if the diagnostic criteria (eg blood tests) are being gamed for political reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:33PM
And lets not forget measles, where 99% of what would have previously been diagnosed as measles are now diagnosed as something else:
Walter A. Orenstein, Rafael Harpaz; Completeness of Measles Case Reporting: Review of Estimates for the United States, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 189, Issue Supplement_1, 1 May 2004, Pages S185–S190, https://doi.org/10.1086/378501 [doi.org]