6 ms·

Why? "your rights stop at mine". If they are willing to wear all encompassing bio hazard suits, and bubble their house, fine by me if they care not to vaccinat

by keepper 10y ago

Why? "your rights stop at mine". If they are willing to wear all encompassing bio hazard suits, and bubble their house, fine by me if they care not to vaccinate... It is our problem when people don't believe in herd immunity and other problems that can affect the community.

jdoliner 10y ago
What exactly do you think grants you a right to herd immunity? You might really really want herd immunity, but you don't have a right to it. Your rights stop at theirs just as much as their rights stop at yours. They do have a right not to be subjected to medical procedures, you don't have a right to herd immunity. It's frustrating and regressive but herd immunity is something we have to decide on as a herd, and currently we're deciding against it.
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  I think this is sorta on the nose, but I would rephrase it as "Do we have a right to not be subjected to medical procedures?" And the answer to that seems to be fairly strongly in the affirmative. I imagine we will be approaching a more nuanced legal view of such things in the near future as we battle to understand where rights really stand. (Much like many of our rights, there are exceptional situations - like the oft quoted yelling "FIRE!" in a movie theater - and perhaps vaccinations should be treated similarly.) EDIT - I was pointed to some interesting CDC info below, and there is an interesting scenario possible: make measels a quarantinable disease. This would become a choice with teeth. Choose to vaccinate, or risk isolation. Thankfully, the CDC seems like a fairly serious outfit, and I'm not worried about abuse of power in this way, but it does rephrase the topic a bit.
  - lsiebert 10y ago
    Quarantine laws exist for a reason.
    - HCIdivision17 10y ago
      I had never looked it up, and it seems the CDC (unsurprisingly) is involved in applying these laws. https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin... From that site, it seems that isolation and quarantine is largely done at borders between states and country. It's also very serious, and it's not something the CDC takes lightly: the last major enforcement of the rule was in 1918 for the Spanish Flu (though it cites there were other minor applications - the ebola scare last year may be one small instance of that). In context of this, I would imagine that measles would need to be added to the list of diseases quarantine is enforced (I haven't spotted this list yet). EDIT: found the important list, and it mentions specifically measels are NOT on the list: The list of quarantinable diseases is contained in an Executive Order of the President and includes cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers (such as Marburg, Ebola, and Congo-Crimean), and severe acute respiratory syndromes. Many other illnesses of public health signficance, such as measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox, are not contained in the list of quarantinable illnesses, but continue to pose a health risk to the public. Quarantine Station personnel respond to reports of ill travelers aboard airplanes, ships, and at land border crossings to make an assessment of the public health risk and initiate an appropriate response. One of the executive orders is linked in that list: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2003-04-09/pdf/03-8832.pdf https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2003-04-09/pdf/03-8832.pdf
- lsiebert 10y ago
  It's not about rights, it's about public safety. I don't have an inherent natural human right to have people obey traffic laws, but they save lives and a majority of people support them. And more then 2/3s of parents in every state of the nation vaccinate their kids. It's the tiny minority of people who refuse to that fuck it up for the rest of us, much like people drinking and driving cause car crashes. http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/22/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-vaccination-rates/ http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/22/states-with-t...
  - jdoliner 10y ago
    > It's not about rights Sorry, to me it is about rights and it should be to you as well. It is also very much about public safety to me, both are important. But to me forced procedures would be an unacceptable violation of rights not worth it for the public safety gains. I can understand the point of view that eroding those rights is worth the public safety gains. I cannot understand the point of view that this is not, on some level, about rights.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Driving licenses restrict rights because the alternative, anyone being allowed to drive anything, anywhere, in any condition, is utter chaos and would result in tens of millions of people dying from avoidable catastrophes. So long as people have a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" then they must acknowledge that certain things must be done to protect that right. Mass vaccinations is one of those things.
    - lsiebert 10y ago
      I guess I think rights go hand in hand with duties and responsibilities, including one's duty to other humans, and the responsibility of the government to act on behalf of the governed for the common welfare.
- MereInterest 10y ago
  At some point, there is a social contract. In exchange for the benefits of being part of society, you play by the rules of society. For example, I may not dispose of feces in ways that allow it to get back to groundwater. This holds even if it is on my own property. In the same way, people do not have the right to infect others with preventable diseases. With individual decision about vaccination, the minority gets to overrule the decision of the majority. The majority of people are vaccinated. The majority of people have, in effect, voted for herd immunity. A minority of people have voted against herd immunity. Because it requires 90-95% vaccination rates for herd immunity to occur, the minority wins that "vote". This is unreasonable.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  When such "decisions" mean me and my family are incurring a substantially higher risk of getting some deadly disease, things are no longer so nice and well-manicured as you describe them.
  - jdoliner 10y ago
    I don't think it's nice or well-manicured at all, quite the opposite in fact. I just can't get myself to a point where I think it's reasonable to force a medical procedure on someone. Forced medical procedures have been used in too many evil ways in the past, always under the guise of a greater societal good. I agree that the societal good (herd immunity) is very real and very important in this case, I just can't square myself with the costs of obtaining it.
    - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
      Right now we're debating whether it's reasonable or not to "force" a medical procedure on someone. When epidemics break out and people start to die, all the reasonable parts of this debate will go down the drain, and more forceful approaches may be adopted. Keep that in mind when you're thinking about what's "reasonable" and what isn't.
- astrodust 10y ago
  As a society we've worked hard to eradicate things like polio, measels, and other violently contagious diseases that left uncheecked would destroy the lives of hundreds of millions of people. As a member of that society I have the right to benefit from our collective efforts because those efforts were done for me, for you, for everyone, without exclusion. These things were given to us by our ancestors, by our governments, by our own individual contributions. Right now there are people working tirelessly and facing extreme risk to elininate the tiniest pockets of polio in the world. They are killed on a worryingly regular basis because of a form of anti-vaxx sentiment: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36090891 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36090891 If you're a staunch libertarian your position should be that I can do whatever I want so long as I don't infringe upon your rights, and one of the most fundamental rights is a right to live and do what I please. Unvaccinated people can strip you of your right to live.
  - mping 10y ago
    Could use the same argument for vegetarianism, environment causes, gun control, etc. If it were up to me guns and hard liquor would be banned and cars would have limited speed. These are all things that affect me even if I don't use them.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      If you can frame vegetarianism in a way that someone eating meat causes another person direct harm, maybe you have a case. Environmentally speaking there is more of a clear connection, though it is more of a sliding scale. Is someone smoking next door an imminent threat to my life? Not typically. Is someone experimenting with highly radioactive materials next door an imminent threat to my life? It could very well be. There's often a lot of grey, but there are times when the threat is obvious. A deliberately unvaccinated child is a serious health risk to everyone they interact with. If there's enough of these children around the risk grows. Vaccinated children are already rife with disease, they're more vulnerable than adults. Unvaccinated ones may as well be radioactive. I don't know that hard liquor bans are something you could argue for. America tried that already and it didn't work out at all.
    - 10y ago

by keepper 10y ago

jdoliner 10y ago

What exactly do you think grants you a right to herd immunity? You might really really want herd immunity, but you don't have a right to it. Your rights stop at theirs just as much as their rights stop at yours. They do have a right not to be subjected to medical procedures, you don't have a right to herd immunity. It's frustrating and regressive but herd immunity is something we have to decide on as a herd, and currently we're deciding against it.

HCIdivision17 10y ago
I think this is sorta on the nose, but I would rephrase it as "Do we have a right to not be subjected to medical procedures?" And the answer to that seems to be fairly strongly in the affirmative. I imagine we will be approaching a more nuanced legal view of such things in the near future as we battle to understand where rights really stand. (Much like many of our rights, there are exceptional situations - like the oft quoted yelling "FIRE!" in a movie theater - and perhaps vaccinations should be treated similarly.) EDIT - I was pointed to some interesting CDC info below, and there is an interesting scenario possible: make measels a quarantinable disease. This would become a choice with teeth. Choose to vaccinate, or risk isolation. Thankfully, the CDC seems like a fairly serious outfit, and I'm not worried about abuse of power in this way, but it does rephrase the topic a bit.
- lsiebert 10y ago
  Quarantine laws exist for a reason.
  - HCIdivision17 10y ago
    I had never looked it up, and it seems the CDC (unsurprisingly) is involved in applying these laws. https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin... From that site, it seems that isolation and quarantine is largely done at borders between states and country. It's also very serious, and it's not something the CDC takes lightly: the last major enforcement of the rule was in 1918 for the Spanish Flu (though it cites there were other minor applications - the ebola scare last year may be one small instance of that). In context of this, I would imagine that measles would need to be added to the list of diseases quarantine is enforced (I haven't spotted this list yet). EDIT: found the important list, and it mentions specifically measels are NOT on the list: The list of quarantinable diseases is contained in an Executive Order of the President and includes cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers (such as Marburg, Ebola, and Congo-Crimean), and severe acute respiratory syndromes. Many other illnesses of public health signficance, such as measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox, are not contained in the list of quarantinable illnesses, but continue to pose a health risk to the public. Quarantine Station personnel respond to reports of ill travelers aboard airplanes, ships, and at land border crossings to make an assessment of the public health risk and initiate an appropriate response. One of the executive orders is linked in that list: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2003-04-09/pdf/03-8832.pdf https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2003-04-09/pdf/03-8832.pdf
lsiebert 10y ago
It's not about rights, it's about public safety. I don't have an inherent natural human right to have people obey traffic laws, but they save lives and a majority of people support them. And more then 2/3s of parents in every state of the nation vaccinate their kids. It's the tiny minority of people who refuse to that fuck it up for the rest of us, much like people drinking and driving cause car crashes. http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/22/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-vaccination-rates/ http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/08/22/states-with-t...
- jdoliner 10y ago
  > It's not about rights Sorry, to me it is about rights and it should be to you as well. It is also very much about public safety to me, both are important. But to me forced procedures would be an unacceptable violation of rights not worth it for the public safety gains. I can understand the point of view that eroding those rights is worth the public safety gains. I cannot understand the point of view that this is not, on some level, about rights.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Driving licenses restrict rights because the alternative, anyone being allowed to drive anything, anywhere, in any condition, is utter chaos and would result in tens of millions of people dying from avoidable catastrophes. So long as people have a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" then they must acknowledge that certain things must be done to protect that right. Mass vaccinations is one of those things.
  - lsiebert 10y ago
    I guess I think rights go hand in hand with duties and responsibilities, including one's duty to other humans, and the responsibility of the government to act on behalf of the governed for the common welfare.
MereInterest 10y ago
At some point, there is a social contract. In exchange for the benefits of being part of society, you play by the rules of society. For example, I may not dispose of feces in ways that allow it to get back to groundwater. This holds even if it is on my own property. In the same way, people do not have the right to infect others with preventable diseases. With individual decision about vaccination, the minority gets to overrule the decision of the majority. The majority of people are vaccinated. The majority of people have, in effect, voted for herd immunity. A minority of people have voted against herd immunity. Because it requires 90-95% vaccination rates for herd immunity to occur, the minority wins that "vote". This is unreasonable.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
When such "decisions" mean me and my family are incurring a substantially higher risk of getting some deadly disease, things are no longer so nice and well-manicured as you describe them.
- jdoliner 10y ago
  I don't think it's nice or well-manicured at all, quite the opposite in fact. I just can't get myself to a point where I think it's reasonable to force a medical procedure on someone. Forced medical procedures have been used in too many evil ways in the past, always under the guise of a greater societal good. I agree that the societal good (herd immunity) is very real and very important in this case, I just can't square myself with the costs of obtaining it.
  - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    Right now we're debating whether it's reasonable or not to "force" a medical procedure on someone. When epidemics break out and people start to die, all the reasonable parts of this debate will go down the drain, and more forceful approaches may be adopted. Keep that in mind when you're thinking about what's "reasonable" and what isn't.
astrodust 10y ago
As a society we've worked hard to eradicate things like polio, measels, and other violently contagious diseases that left uncheecked would destroy the lives of hundreds of millions of people. As a member of that society I have the right to benefit from our collective efforts because those efforts were done for me, for you, for everyone, without exclusion. These things were given to us by our ancestors, by our governments, by our own individual contributions. Right now there are people working tirelessly and facing extreme risk to elininate the tiniest pockets of polio in the world. They are killed on a worryingly regular basis because of a form of anti-vaxx sentiment: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36090891 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36090891 If you're a staunch libertarian your position should be that I can do whatever I want so long as I don't infringe upon your rights, and one of the most fundamental rights is a right to live and do what I please. Unvaccinated people can strip you of your right to live.
- mping 10y ago
  Could use the same argument for vegetarianism, environment causes, gun control, etc. If it were up to me guns and hard liquor would be banned and cars would have limited speed. These are all things that affect me even if I don't use them.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    If you can frame vegetarianism in a way that someone eating meat causes another person direct harm, maybe you have a case. Environmentally speaking there is more of a clear connection, though it is more of a sliding scale. Is someone smoking next door an imminent threat to my life? Not typically. Is someone experimenting with highly radioactive materials next door an imminent threat to my life? It could very well be. There's often a lot of grey, but there are times when the threat is obvious. A deliberately unvaccinated child is a serious health risk to everyone they interact with. If there's enough of these children around the risk grows. Vaccinated children are already rife with disease, they're more vulnerable than adults. Unvaccinated ones may as well be radioactive. I don't know that hard liquor bans are something you could argue for. America tried that already and it didn't work out at all.
  - 10y ago