The Glade 4.0

This. Unvaccinated children pose a health risk to everyone.

I don't like the idea of creating a law to mandate vaccines. I would prefer to have negative ramifications for people that decide to decline. Like maybe your unvaccinated child shouldn't be allowed to attend public schools.

That's totally absurd. The only children that pose health risks are ones that are contagious.

Your logic isn't.

Now, potentially, one day an unvaccinated child COULD be exposed to some disease and then COULD contract something that COULD pose a risk that COULD have been prevented by some vaccine (and all those COULDS would all have to perfectly align for your assertion to have any freaking merit at all)
<snip> nonsensical rambling </snip>

You don't want to vaccinate, feel free. Move to an island somewhere, we'll mail you a care package full of all the things you refuse to vaccinate against. We'll see how fast the anti-vaxers come up with their own mandatory vaccination programs.

There's no threat from folks that aren't sick, no matter how you spin it. None. Zero. Your freaking imagination is where the threat lies, and when you have to apply hypotheticals to turn reality into something resembling the point of your argument, you've failed miserably. And make no mistake, you've failed miserably.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a report urging people to get vaccinated after reported measles cases in the U.S. reached a 20-year high - and it’s only May.

Between January 1 and May 23 of this year, 288 cases of measles in the U.S. were reported to the CDC, making it the largest number of reported cases within the first 5 months of the year since 1994. Why are we seeing this surge in measles? According to the CDC, it’s mostly because of international travel by unvaccinated individuals. 97% of the cases so far were so called “importations”, where individuals have caught the disease from another country and brought it back. Furthermore, 90% of the infected individuals were either unvaccinated or did not know their vaccination status. 85% of the unvaccinated individuals said that they remained unvaccinated because of personal, philosophical or religious reasons.

“The current increase in measles cases is being driven by unvaccinated people, primarily U.S. residents, who got measles in other countries, brought the virus back to the United States and spread to others in communities where many people are not vaccinated,” says Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases. “Many of the clusters in the U.S. began following travel to the Philippines where a large outbreak has been occurring since October 2013.”

Measles is not a harmless disease. It can have serious complications and is very contagious. Around 30% of measles cases will develop complications such as pneumonia and diarrhea and 1 child in every 1,000 will develop encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). Although many countries have measles vaccination programs, the disease is still common in various parts of the world. It is estimated that 20 million people each year get measles; 122,000 of these individuals will die of the disease.

Measles is a vaccine preventable disease. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that demonstrates both the safety and the efficacy of the MMR vaccine. The CDC recommends two doses of this vaccine starting at the age of 12 months, but any individuals travelling internationally can receive the vaccine after the age of 6 months prior to departure. The CDC strongly recommends vaccination to anyone, regardless of whether they are intending on leaving the country, before the summer travel season approaches.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Rather than mandating vaccination (which I'm not against, to be honest), what if we instead made spreading of untruths punishable by law? If it can be proven to be false, you're fined. Basically libel/slander protection for science.

That would have the added bonus of shutting down the growing YEC nonsense, too. Win-win.

I don't think all vaccines are created equal or are equally necessary.

AH you mean like... say ... a carrier of a disease who isn't 'sick'? Or someone who is HIV positive but asymptomatic?

Please go babble your uneducated, uninformed drivel somewhere else. You don't actually understand any of this, as demonstrated by your repeated, factually untrue, statements. There are no hypotheticals here. ALL of the diseases we immunize against are because of ACTUAL, REAL, Historical diseases that swept through the population. You don't know the history of these diseases, and their historical effect on the population.

Vaccines save lives. They prevent epidemics. They dramatically decrease the rate of viral mutation and the chance that a virus could develop a new vector for transmission.

Flu vaccine? The single most deadly pandemic, the Spanish Flu during 1918 killed between 20 and 100 MILLION People worldwide, and approximately 1 billion humans contracted it (1/2 the worlds population at the time).

I say again. THIS. IS. NOT. HYPOTHETICAL. Your uneducated attempts to characterize it as such is only evidence of your ignorance. No vaccine is 100% effective. So even those who do get vaccines are at risk from those who have not received them should a disease enter the population.... like they always do.

There are SOME arguments against vaccination that are sound. You're making none of them, and instead inventing 'facts' to justify your position.

There's no threat from folks that aren't sick

As in Hardin’s common, the very existence of this common leads to tension between the best interests of the individual and those of the community. Increased immunization rates result in significantly decreased risk for disease. Although no remaining unimmunized individual can be said to be free of risk from the infectious disease, the herd effect generated from high immunization rates significantly reduces the risk for disease for those individuals. Additional benefit is conferred on the unimmuni­ zed person because avoidance of the vaccine avoids the risk for any adverse reactions associated with the vaccine. As disease rates drop, the risks associated with the vaccine come even more to the fore, providing further incentive to avoid immunization. Thus, when an individual in this common chooses to go unimmunized, it only minimally increases the risk of illness for that individual, while conferring on that person the benefit of avoiding the risk of vaccine- induced side effects.

Bottom line - Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The state can't forcibly vaccinate folks.

Jacobson v. Massachusetts established that the state CAN forcibly vaccinate people

As the 20th century began, epidemics of infectious diseases such as smallpox remained a recurrent threat. A Massachusetts statute granted city boards of health the authority to require vaccination “when necessary for public health or safety.”17 In 1902, when smallpox surged in Cambridge, the city’s board of health issued an order pursuant to this authority that required all adults to be vaccinated to halt the disease. The statutory penalty for refusing vaccination was a monetary fine of $5 (about $100 today). There was no provision for actually forcing vaccination on any person.

Henning Jacobson refused vaccination, claiming that he and his son had had bad reactions to earlier vaccinations. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found it unnecessary to worry about any possible harm from vaccination, because no one could actually be forced to be vaccinated: “If a person should deem it important that vaccination should not be performed in his case, and the authorities should think otherwise, it is not in their power to vaccinate him by force, and the worst that could happen to him under the statute would be the payment of $5.” Jacobson was fined, and he appealed to the US Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court had no difficulty upholding the state’s power to grant the board of health authority to order a general vaccination program during an epidemic. No one disputed, and the Constitution confirmed, that states retained all the sovereign authority they had not ceded to the national government in the Constitution.

...a state statute that actually forced people to be vaccinated over their refusal, such as Florida’s new “public health emergency” law, would probably be an unconstitutional violation of the right to refuse treatment. In the case of Nancy Cruzan, the Court assumed, without having to decide, that competent adults have a constitutionally protected right to refuse any medical treatment, including artificially delivered care such as nutrition and hydration.

In a 5-4 court decision, the Court found in favor of the Missouri Dept. of Health. However, it upheld the legal standard that competent persons are able to exercise the right to refuse medical treatment under the Due Process Clause and its implied right to privacy.

Mr. Jacobson or Reverend Jacobson refused to be vaccinated and because of his refusal he was fined 5 dollars. Well he challenged that fine and he appealed and the case went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. And the U.S. Supreme Court actually ruled that in a case such as this where there was an outbreak of smallpox that the public’s health and the public’s right to be safe from the disease of smallpox was more important or outweighed Reverend Jacobson’s right to be free from vaccination.

So this was a very important public health law case. And in fact there may not even be today an area of law called public health law but for this court decision -- which really kind of opened the doors very wide to allowing the government -- state government, federal government, government in general -- to take public health action even when such public health action might impinge or interfere with individual liberties and an individual’s right to be free from being touched for example by the U.S. government or by a state government.

In this case Reverend Jacobson was still he was fined 5 dollars. He had to pay the fine. There never was a question about whether or not the government could forcibly require Reverend Jacobson to be vaccinated.

And the U.S. Supreme Court actually ruled that in a case such as this where there was an outbreak of smallpox that the public’s health and the public’s right to be safe from the disease of smallpox was more important or outweighed Reverend Jacobson’s right to be free from vaccination.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found it unnecessary to worry about any possible harm from vaccination, because no one could actually be forced to be vaccinated

It seems to me that the power to impos crminal penalty for refusing a vaccination is 'permitting forcible vaccination'. People around here habitually refer to practically anyhing government mandated as being done 'at the point of a gun.' Why this is different for vaccinations just because the penalty was a fine rather than forceful sticking of the needle is something you will need to explain.

I have no idea so don't ask me. I'm still wrapped around the axle about the government being able to impose a criminal penalty as a way to force me to buy health insurance from a private company.

Ok, in that case why are you taking issue with me pointing out that the decision you cited allows the government to fine (and presumably jail) people for refusing vaccines, even if it prohibits the government from forcibly sticking them with a needle?

Jacobson v. Massachusetts established that the state CAN forcibly vaccinate people

Mandate Vaccines?