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US Vaccine Panel Chair Says Polio and Other Shots Should Be Optional

• deleted 9mo ago
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• 46493168 9mo ago
  I don’t think the right question is “should vaccines be optional?” I think it’s “to what extent should public and private institutions be expected to accommodate people who, for no other reason than ignorance, choose to opt out of the collective responsibility to public health?” Am I allowed, as a business owner, to pass on an antivax candidate? Am I, as a school administrator, permitted to keep an unvaccinated child from my school system? Vaccines were always optional in the sense nobody ties you down and makes you take them, and certainly all requirements have exceptions for people with, i.e, immune system issues.
  • freen 9mo ago
    Vaccines aren’t perfect, and the inaction of others can cause extreme adverse impacts on everyone due to total vaccination rate falling below herd immunity levels. It’s just like taxes.
    • barbazoo 9mo ago
      Seatbelts aren’t perfect either
  • SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
    You're right to intuit that the framing doesn't make sense. The source article clarifies that, when regime officials say "optional", what they actually mean is that they deny any collective responsibility for public health. The opinion of this "vaccine panel chair" is that you should not be permitted to exclude unvaccinated children from anything for any reason. He explicitly acknowledges that this will lead to more children getting tragic and preventable diseases, to be clear. There's no dispute about that. He's just decided that sacrificing those children is worth it for the sake of medical autonomy.
    • 46493168 9mo ago
      It's a strange, sort of fatalistic cognitive dissonance to believe that parents have the right to risk their children's lives by exposing them to preventable deadly diseases while at same time making it illegal for women to terminate pregnancies.
      • etchalon 9mo ago
        It's not too strange. It's just selfish preference. "I don't want my kids to get vaccinated and I don't want your daughter to have sex."
      • kibwen 9mo ago
        Cognitive dissonance via hypocrisy and absurdity is deliberately embraced by fascist regimes, because it's a form of proof that the speaker cares more about loyalty to the state than about rational independent thought.
      • graemep 9mo ago
        The main argument for allowing abortion is that people have a right to do what they want with their bodies. The opposing argument is that this does not extend to a baby's body. I do not see how either side can then say the government has a right to force people to do something to their bodies. Vaccines are not mandatory in any country I know but most people have them bar hippies and conspiracy theorists. I think its stupid not to have (most, at least) childhood vaccines but people should be free to be stupid.
        • SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
          I really don't understand why facile abortion analogies are so popular in vaccine discussions. In the worst case pregnancy is orders of magnitude riskier than vaccination, and the typical pregnancy is more impactful than all but the worst vaccine side effects. There's no useful comparison to be drawn.
          • graemep 9mo ago
  • giantg2 9mo ago
    “to what extent should public and private institutions be expected to accommodate people who, for no other reason than ignorance, choose to opt out of the collective responsibility to public health?” Before we can answer that, we would have to define the risks. For example, the polio vaccine has no logical basis for being mandatory in the US. The requirement of the polio in the US has no basis in science and it goes against the stated purpose of the recommendations as it does not weigh risks and benefits. Instead, it is an ideological stance. Polio has been eradicated from the US (except for cases caused by vaccines themselves) and most of the rest of the world. You could require it for travel to/from risky locations. We know that severe adverse affects vastly out number the cases of Polio in the US.
    • etchalon 9mo ago
      It absolutely weighed risks and benefits.
      • giantg2 9mo ago
        Can you elaborate?
    • homeonthemtn 9mo ago
      Not mentioned here is the risk of importing polio from another country. The need for the vaccine can certainly be discussed, but I'm not going to pretend that the country exists in a vacuum
      • giantg2 9mo ago
        Just require if for travel, as we do with Yellow Fever and other vaccines.
    • deleted 9mo ago
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    • IncreasePosts 9mo ago
      If the polio vaccine was banned in the US starting tomorrow, would you expect the next cohort of newborns to experience higher levels of polio, similar levels of polio, or lower levels of polio over the next 10 years?
  • kryogen1c 9mo ago
    > no other reason than ignorance Well, speaking of ignorance! Vaccines are not perfectly safe. All medicine can harm, and vaccines are no exception. Mandating dozens of vaccines to billions of children is forcing parents, under threat of state-sponsored violence, to injure their children. There are 10s of thousands of VAERS cases in the US per year. Now multiply that by 20 and we're in the ballpark for number of children youre so cavalierly arguing to force harm upon. Now, there are diseases where vaccines make sense. However, the blanket statement "inject into your newborn whatever the government tells you" is pretty obviously stupid in my opinion; there are plenty of cases of known-toxins taking years to get removed from market with no corporate repercussions - the incentive structures arent perfect. See DDT, leaded gasoline, asbestos, Teflon, uranium mill tailings, cases too numerous to mention. However much you trust the government to do their best, there are agile corporations getting paid handsomely to outmaneuver them. For my children, we make a disease-by-disease risk/reward determination and do a slower schedule once they're a little older.
    • deleted 9mo ago
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    • SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
      What "state-sponsored violence" are you referring to? You can't go to jail for refusing childhood vaccines in the US, as far as I'm aware. But you also can't expect the rest of us to let you inflict violence on our children, by exposing them to deadly communicable diseases which you could easily vaccinate your own children against.
      • kryogen1c 9mo ago
        > What "state-sponsored violence" are you referring to? Not referring to a status quo, but to the implication of the parent, and yours after the fact, that we should consider mandating vaccines. > deadly communicable disease If you think this is the only thing on the US vaccination schedule, you should do a little research.
        • 9mo ago
  • rayiner 9mo ago
    Note that vaccines are optional in Sweden, and not required for attendance in public schools: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency-of-sweden/communicable-disease-control/vaccinations/vaccination-programmes/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency... So you’re correct that, for vaccine proponents, framing this issue properly is key. If you frame it in terms of mandates and dismiss optionality out of hand, it’s a lay-up for right-wing Tik Tok to come back with “they’re more left wing than Sweden.” (Disclosure: Despite being a right winger, I would be fine with holding people down and vaccinating them.) Of course there’s relevant differences. Swedes are culturally orderly and most Americans aren’t. Sweden has a 97% vaccination rate even with voluntary programs. But you have to confront that issue head on and deal with it.
    • goku12 9mo ago
      > So you’re correct that, for vaccine proponents, framing this issue properly is key. If you frame it in terms of mandates and dismiss optionality out of hand, it’s a lay-up for right-wing Tik Tok to come back with “they’re more left wing than Sweden.” I think it's a bit more complex than that. How do you frame an issue properly when a small group of people are out to discredit you based on everything from 'deep state' to 'bible' and even the 'aliens'? And while these people are swayed more by emotions than cold hard data (which is not entirely unusual), you also get to hear some of them say 'I do my own research' to an experienced doctor who's trying calmly and respectfully to change their mind. Let me contrast that with my place. My place isn't as developed as the US or Sweden. But people were keen to oblige when a lock down was declared for covid, despite personal losses, because the rich people didn't get richer on the backs of their misery. The covid vaccines we had here weren't as effective as the mRNA vaccines of the west, and also had the rare blood clotting problem (VITT) that killed a few people. Despite that, people were thronging the health centers when the vaccine came out and the critical mass was soon reached to lift the lock down. People knew the dangers and were making educated tradeoffs. They were online talking about the droplet transmission mode, R0, myocarditis, etc. Doctors didn't have to plead like in the US. We don't have childhood vaccine mandates because parents make it a point to ask the pediatrician about it and the associated risks and do it diligently. We grew up learning the horrors of smallpox, polio, Hansen's disease, tuberculosis, etc. Nobody is keen to take them on again. The real problem in the US isn't right wing or left wing politics. It's the anti-intellectual culture. Honestly, I haven't seen as much skepticism against the sciences anywhere else. Sure, people sometimes say stupid stuff in underdeveloped places. But rarely does anybody reject science outright like in the US. And very often, the US government is squarely responsible for it. How many times has the government taken the sides of the big industries and hung the people out to dry? (Big oil, big tobacco, telecom, big pharma, big agriculture, chemical producers, etc.) Wasn't there a case where a racial minority of a city was intentionally infected with syphilis and denied treatment for a sick experiment? This is how people turn anti-government, anti-establishment and even anarchist. And then the people find it difficult to believe anything the government stands for - including the genuine pro-public science institutions like the CDC or even NASA - to a level that some even have difficulty believing that the Earth is spherical (roughly). Heck! I was once asked by an American tourist if I believe that the US sent men to the moon, when I was a project engineer for a mid-heavy lift launcher! You can see this effect even outside the US. The US used a vaccination drive in Abottabad, Pakistan to collect information about Osama Bin Laden. I'm not here to support the terrorist. But that action led to the people there distrusting and rejecting vaccines, leading to a Polio outbreak. Effing Polio that was nearly eradicated after decades of grueling global effort! Even people who has been to the US say that the government is a bit eccentric and overbearing with their science policies. The problems in the US is more cultural and pervasive than you think. It's self-defeating to think that it's a fringe phenomenon or that it's partisan. A simple reframing of the issue isn't going to solve that.
  • bradfa 9mo ago
    In New York State USA your child must be vaccinated to attend public school: https://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/immunization/schools/school_vaccines/ https://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/immunization/schools/sc... So far, this hasn’t been overturned by the courts. It’s been in place for a few years now.
  • deleted 9mo ago
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  • bilsbie 9mo ago
    > accommodate people who, for no other reason than ignorance, If your “reasoning” relies upon the other people being “dumb” or “cruel” or <insert-your-invective>, you are almost certainly falling short of understanding why the controversy persists.
    • dpe82 9mo ago
      You created a straw man; the parent specifically wrote "ignorance" which is very different from "dumb" or "cruel".
    • IncreasePosts 9mo ago
      Well, what do you call a person who refuses to even look at the evidence for why we know many vaccines work? That person is ignorant. Calling them ignorant to their face probably won't change their mind, but that's a different question
      • justonceokay 9mo ago
        What if they just don’t value the abstract “public health”? To quote my mother, “there is no economy, there’s just my economy and it’s doing fine”. I think a large plurality (if not majority) of Americans think this way. If you do value public health then this viewpoint can seem cruel. But if you think like my mom then vaccines might as well be a government-mandated forehead tattoo.
        • SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
          Then I'm not sure what we're talking about. It sounds like you agree with me and disagree with bilsbie that cruel people who see no value in protecting children from polio are the reason why the controversy persists.
          • sieabahlpark 9mo ago
            [dead]
        • 9mo ago
  • pfdietz 9mo ago
    If someone doesn't get a vaccination, and as a result gets infected, and then as a result passes the disease to someone else, then this should be treated as equivalent to harming someone by causing an accident through reckless driving. What is needed here are laws making it a crime to conceal that you have or had a communicable disease, so infections can be tracked and fault determined.
    • B1FIDO 9mo ago
      It should be a crime to accuse someone who is innocent of any intent to cause harm, and a crime to manufacture evidence to that effect, because basically you could never prove that Alice infected Bob, let alone with malicious intent. It is hysterical and illogical for people to make these accusations. Get real.
      • pfdietz 9mo ago
        Intent is not needed. Causing awful consequences to others through negligence is already a crime. After all, did a drunk driver intend to run over that child? See also "negligent homicide".
    • 46493168 9mo ago
      >What is needed here are laws making it a crime to conceal that you have or had a communicable disease, so infections can be tracked and fault determined. Absolutely not. We tried this with HIV and it just incentivizes people to not seek treatment, and then they spread the disease more.
      • pfdietz 9mo ago
        There are many laws that make it illegal to conceal HIV status when that could result in the infection of others.
        • 46493168 9mo ago
          Yes and many are being repealed because they were written before modern antiretrovirals and before the medical consensus that undetectable = untransmittable (U=U).
  • jmward01 9mo ago
    I think what is missing from every debate about 'freedom to...' is that choices should have consequences. If your unsafe operation of your body (no vaccines when you could have gotten them) injures or kills another person then you should be held accountable. This basic principle, freedom requires responsibility and accountability, is rarely ever brought up. In the US 'freedom' just means freedom from consequences which is wrong. I am more than willing to let someone tote a gun or fail to be vaccinated, but if they do so in a way that actually harms someone then they should be held accountable and the more obvious the danger, and the more reckless the behavior, the more severe the penalty. You think not vaccinating is the right choice despite the mountains of evidence otherwise? When you get sick your insurance can deny all claims. If you infect someone else they can claim damages or criminally prosecute you for assault. That is actual freedom.
    • echelon 9mo ago
      We're all approaching this wrong. Politicizing this was one of the greatest electoral innovations of all time. Somebody realized that calling people ignorant and telling them they had to do something pissed people off and lionized them. So they took the vaccine issue and made it political. They knew the "nerdy folks" would just continue pushing and prodding, and that would continue to rile up the other side's voters. The "institutions" (which are easy to throw shade at) telling folks they had to comply or lose work - that's a cause to fight. There's much more energy in this than in opposing it, and opposition just inflames the other side even further. Genius political move. The correct response to a vaccine critic isn't to call them stupid or tell them they must get a vaccine or lose their job. The correct response is, "you do you, but the supply runs out next week". Hank Green had a nice video essay about this (I'll try to find the link). I grew up in the South. These are reasonable folks, and they can be reached, but it's being approached the wrong way. The current methodology is only making it worse. This is like a viral "meme" that actually causes harm. And the more you try to get rid of it, the deeper it digs. You have to try a new approach. The current one -- and it feels so righteous to call them out -- does the exact opposite of what you want.
      • jmward01 9mo ago
  • croes 9mo ago
    Optional often means not covered by health insurance
    • maxerickson 9mo ago
      At least with vaccines there is a good chance that the actuaries will conclude that covering them is the cheaper thing to do.
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
• QuadmasterXLII 9mo ago
  To clarify, this is about forcing schools to default admit kids who aren't vaccinated, instead of having a waiver process. All these vaccines are already optional and have been for decades, and schools currently make judgement calls on a case by case basis about admitting kids who don't have them (due to medical or religious reasons, and taking into account current population disease burden). The article body clarifies this, but the headline is buying into a framing that is not honest.
• unquietwiki 9mo ago
  I have a hot take that MAHA is a modern eugenics movement; that prioritizes access to the Free Market as a provider of good health and relies on Darwinian outcomes for the population at large. Everything's about avoiding autism ("feeblemindedness" anyone?), perceived physical weakness (never mind the gender-related overtones), and collective responsibility (maybe your Mom didn't eat enough of the new food pyramid, so now you're more likely to get polio, or something). There are some rather profane conclusions to be made from this belief system.
  • amanaplanacanal 9mo ago
    Killing off the people that support you doesn't seem like a smart way to stay in power. I guess they assume there will be enough new converts to replace the ones they lost?
    • rolph 9mo ago
      someone possessed by thier beliefs, is not making factually based decisions. some snakeoil salesmen know they are pushing bunk, a frightful number actually believe in what they are peddling.
    • ketamine__ 9mo ago
      [dead]
    • SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
      It's a death cult. I know that's an inflammatory way to phrase it, but I genuinely think it's the only accurate diagnosis. The regime doesn't have some deep strategic logic for how children dying from polio will benefit them, they just don't care so much about death in general and don't understand why we would.
    • unquietwiki 9mo ago
      Well, there also seems to be concerns over testosterone levels & fertility. Combined with attempts to reduce birth control & abortion, and you come away with an expectation they intend to breed their way out of losses (returning again to the eugenics overtones). Someone was also recently quoted as saying measles outbreaks "are the cost of doing business".
• tigerlily 9mo ago
  A former academic supervisor mused it could be good for a society to see the return of diseases causing lifelong disfigurement and disability just to remind people to get vaccinated. Personally I don't think it needs to go that far, and it's a situation entirely preventable.
  • KempyKolibri 9mo ago
    Feels a bit like this though, no? https://xkcd.com/2557/ https://xkcd.com/2557/ The reason we want people to get vaccinated is to stop people getting the diseases…
  • Spivak 9mo ago
    Is there a term for when a problem has been solved for so long it falls out of living memory creating a natural breeding ground for people to question why the solution is even necessary, come up with nothing because the problem is so long gone, and invent conspiracy theories to fill the gap? Nobody is scared of getting polio anymore and one person not getting vaccinated doesn't really change anything --> the fact that they're nonetheless making me get vaccinated must be because of government chips, lizardpeople, big pharma profits, etc etc. More specific than Chesterton's fence or just history repeating itself.
    • BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
      Conspiratorial amnesia?
• jmclnx 9mo ago
  Every competent doctor says otherwise. Polio is starting to slowly become a thing, so we will probably need to start producing more Iron Lungs if we follow the new flat-earth CDC. Even the article proves these "advisors" have no clue on how vaccines work.
  • giantg2 9mo ago
    "Polio is starting to slowly become a thing," Where?
    • overtone1000 9mo ago
      It's more accurate to say the wild poliovirus eradication effort has been stagnant in Afghanistan and Pakistan for over a decade.
      • BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
        And relatively recently there were a fair few US citizens rotating in and out of Afghanistan.
        • giantg2 9mo ago
          And they received vaccines appropriate for their deployment. Similar to Yellow Fever - not required in the US, but required related to travel to/from risky areas.
    • jmclnx 9mo ago
      I did a simple search, here it is. A .gov site: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9577438/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9577438/ There were other articles I have seen over the last few years talking about polio and the US.
      • giantg2 9mo ago
        Yeah, that's from the vaccine. Just don't use the live version of the vaccine.
• trehalose 9mo ago
  What's next, recommending school cafeteria employees be free not to wash their hands after taking a shit? Recommending schools not be forced to have bathroom faucets at all? Getting rid of regulations about how many rats are allowed to live in the kitchen? Where do we draw the line at what's a freedom that must not be violated?
  • thrance 9mo ago
    The line is whatever's trendy on conservative tiktok. The right has no real project for healthcare in this country, they don't care about any actual issues. The only thing they can do is populist shit: inserting raw milk in the food pyramid, banning vaccines, and whatever their mentally ill influencers will talk about next.
• 51Cards 9mo ago
  Let it be a choice, with the mandate that if you opt out and later contract it there will be no state funded assistance down the road. Your choice shouldn't be a burden on the system.
  • croes 9mo ago
    But that choice endangers others too. Some people can’t get vaccinated. And being a choice often means you have to pay yourself to get it because it isn’t covered by health insurance. So bad for poor people again
• bad_haircut72 9mo ago
  I think forcing people to get vaccines that they dont want, even if they object for bad reasons, is also wrong. If Trump came out tomorrow and said "everyone is going to be forced to get this new vaccine RFK made in his basement" all the pro-vaccine people would be horrified. Well thats how the anti-vaxers feel about Covid shots, rightfully or wrongly. That being said, of course the net effects of this will be more disease, and internationally probably harsher Visa restrictions on Americans.
  • thomascgalvin 9mo ago
    There is a massive difference between requiring scientifically, medically proven vaccines that have demonstrably ended terrible diseases that once absolutely ravaged our population, and requiring anybody to follow the "health recommendations" of someone who's only credentials are surname and ability to brown-nose.
  • croes 9mo ago
    What about those who can’t get vaccinated because of health issues?
• b3ing 9mo ago
  To get some transplants you need to be vaccinated. I don’t get it, is it to make the healthcare industry more money? I’m waiting for the next crazy denial, like that dinosaurs didn’t exist or that the earth is the center of the universe… just give it a few years
• YZF 9mo ago
  The title seems pretty click-bait. If you read the article the argument isn't that vaccines don't work or that not vaccinating may increase disease and deaths. It's that our personal freedoms should still win. The example the Dr. gives with alcoholism seems quite relevant, many more people have negative health outcomes due to alcohol consumption: "Alcohol is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, with harms related to both acute and chronic effects of alcohol contributing to about 4.3 million emergency department visits and more than 178,000 deaths in the U.S. each year." https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/core-resource-on-alcohol/medical-complications-common-alcohol-related-concerns https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/health-professionals-communities/c... Should we ban alcohol? While it's true that there are different externalities here (e.g. you're increasing other people's risk by not vaccinating and losing the herd effect) there are also externalities to alcohol consumption (e.g. drunken drivers). The question is where does that line go between freedom and health factors and other externalities. We should be able to have this discussion without political tribalism.
  • croes 9mo ago
    Alcohol is the perfect example because it also endangers others. What about people who can’t get vaccines? The vaccinated help to protect them.
  • vander_elst 9mo ago
    If you kill someone when drunk driving you face more serious consequences than if you weren't drunk. There should be similar consequences here you get a disease you could have vaccinated for? You pay 4 times the amount for the cure.
    • YZF 9mo ago
      Should there be similar consequences for the people killed due to wasted health care resources? Or family members affected by an alcoholic? What about smokers and second hand smoke?
      • vander_elst 9mo ago
• BLKNSLVR 9mo ago
  > "What we are doing is returning individual autonomy to the first order — not public health but individual autonomy to the first order,” he added. From the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, I would have thought, and hoped, public health is their priority. Individual autonomy is for the politicians to decide on, isn't it? Medical professionals advise on medical matters, politicians decide based on the societal implications. Medical professionals aren't elected, and I don't want their personal politics (on individual autonomy or abortion or anything else) infecting their medical advice. What it sounds like to me is politicians getting the advisors to do both jobs because the politicians want to put their hands in the air and say 'I'm just following the advice'. If the outcome is unpopular then the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices are the bad guys, not the politician(s).
• captain_coffee 9mo ago
  POLIO ???? Good job guys, in the meantime I will check if ironlung.io or ironlung.ai are available to buy... I might have a business idea
• tsoukase 9mo ago
  Vaccines for easily transmitted serious diseases are loosely like seat belts in cars. You use them not only to protect yourself but also the others. Also in order to have any meaningful effect, they must be used from a large majority of population, therefore both are mandatory in the developed world (it seems vaccines not any more).