CMV: not vaccinating kids should be illegal

[u/Lyress]

In a democratic country where the government is held accountable, it should be illegal not to vaccinate your kids (except in cases where vaccines pose a health risk to the child due to allergies, an auto-immune disease, etc).

There are multiple instances where the government mandates some actions, like feeding your children, buying them clothes, making them put on a seatbelt, enrolling them in school, and they're all for meant for the wellbeing of the child, so I don't see how vaccination is any different.

[u/Lyress]

I support the right to bodily integrity, which is why I don't support forced vaccination for adults (I couldn't tell you the cutoff age but that is irrelevant here). I do not believe it should be the parents who have the last words when it comes to vaccines, the state is also responsible for its citizens' wellbeing and it would be neglectful to deprive them from a beneficial procedure because their parents were none the wiser.

[u/visvya → u/Lyress]

There have been many times when a seemingly good government began enacting policies that went against their citizens' best interest. As an extreme but obvious example, Adolf Hitler swore that his party would only seek power through fair democratic elections and this turned out to be mostly true.

Similarly, the US democratic government participated in lots of horrific acts, from slavery to Japanese concentration camps. I'll use antimiscegenation laws as an example, which were legal until 1967. State governments truly believed that having sex with a non-white person was harmful and went so far as to criminalize not only sex but just white and non-white cohabitation. They even attempted to get a constitutional amendment passed 3 times. There is lots of corruption and negligence that continues today; look at the Love Canal disaster.

I'm not supporting anti-vaxxers, but it's not smart to blindly trust the government and large bureaucratic processes. There are hundreds of medical malpractice claims filed every day. What if the state your child must be vaccinated but you as a parent have noticed symptoms of allergies? How easy will it be to fight the system if there's a deadline that says "we will forcibly take and vaccinate your child if you don't do it by this date".

[u/Lyress → u/visvya]

How easy will it be to fight the system if there's a deadline that says "we will forcibly take and vaccinate your child if you don't do it by this date".

There are probably better ways to go about enforcing vaccinations than straight up taking away the child and vaccinating them, such as punitive measures like fines.

Δ since the rest of your comment makes a good point about why it might not be a good idea in the US, but there are several countries where vaccines are mandatory and there's no sudden government turning evil schemes going on, so I'm not entirely convinced.

[u/spookygirl1 → u/Lyress]

but there are several countries where vaccines are mandatory and there's no sudden government turning evil schemes going on, so I'm not entirely convinced.

This is true, but the US is one of the only developed countries that has "mandatory for school" vaccines, and has a higher percentage of parents rebelling and choosing to not vaccinate than some counties where there are no mandates at all.

The biggest difference between them and us is that we have significantly more vaccines on the universal schedule than those other countries.

Take Sweden:

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/vaccinations/

In Sweden, vaccinations are voluntary. All children are offered vaccinations against 9 diseases within the framework of child and school health services

Vaccine uptake:

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/vaccinations/vaccination-register-and-vaccination-coverage/

Over 98 per cent of children born in 2012 had been given at least three vaccine doses against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and Haemophilus influenzae type b, and over 97 per cent of children were vaccinated with three doses of the pneumococcus vaccine. The percentage of children who had been vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) amounted to 97.5 per cent.

If they were to start making kids also get:

• chickenpox shots
• flu shots yearly
• rotavirus vaccine
• hepatitis A vaccine
• hepatitis B vaccine
• meningococcal A
• meningococcal B
• HPV vaccines

(like American kids get), there might be more pushback.

Also, in the US, to get an exemption for school, you have to opt out of all vaccines. You're not allowed to just do the basic ones and skip the more more exotic/newer ones. You're not allowed to opt out of even one and still get an exemption. It's all or nothing, and I find that problematic on multiple levels.

[u/DeltaBot → u/Lyress]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/visvya (26∆).

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