We are in accord as to the right of private companies to require vaccinations and that the gov is not entitled to require this for private institutions at all. If the government wants to require vaccinations for public schools, then it should be voted on - and if passed, then implemented.

And you are correct, if someone who does not have a vaccination contracts a disease, the individual is responsible, not the venue.

I posted my TLDNR message because there seemed to be some misunderstanding as to how vaccines work, and I wanted to try to clarify that. (Thank you for reading it!)

Jan

So, how do my fellow Objectivists think the force should be applied? At first, it will only apply to kindergartners, and 7th graders simultaneously. I've read the legislation and spoken with some lawmakers and it's pretty clear that children who don't have all 35 injections prior to starting school in the fall of 2016 will be given a "catch up" schedule of up to 15 vaccines over the following school year, ongoing until they are caught up. But, by then, it will probably be 38 or so. Any who don't fully comply, including those at private schools, will be listed as "truant" and CPS will remove the children from the home with law enforcement assisting (there's the gun part). It's pretty clear that the parents will then likely be jailed. The charge against the parents will be child-endangerment. One of our judicial committee members stated that the state has "an obligation" to interfere with the family structure on these cases.

By the time any of this starts to take place there will probably be a federal law in place for adults. I haven't read the draft on that and can only guess at how force will be applied. How do you think it should be applied? My personal favorite is the removal of basic rights, like the right to travel. Imagine ducking the cops while driving to work each day because your drivers license is invalid. That'd get most of us to roll up our sleeves, I'm guessing - maybe even while waiting in line at the DMV.

What do you think will work? Let's brainstorm...

Jan, I agree with your free market solution completely, as long as it isn't "voluntary" for companies in the same way that income tax withholding is "voluntary."
It makes sense for Disney to require proof of vaccination if Disney could be liable for the spread of disease. Choosing to vaccinate or not can be a choice with some immediate free market consequences, like choosing not to use modern tools and devices as some religions do. You have the right not to vaccinate because it is your body, but you don't have the right to infect others. At the same time, people who can't vaccinate for some reason should take responsibility for their own health, too. If they know there is a risk of contracting a disease by going to Disneyland, and they decide to go, then they should be responsible for the act of exposing themselves to that risk. Sometimes life isn't fair.

We did it without a federal law mandating vaccination. Of course, in those days we didn't allow 100 million illegal immigrants from the 3rd world to invade.
How about forced vaccination, injection of id chips, and deportation of all illegal immgrants and all their offspring (after revoking their improperly acquired citizenship?)

This seems an odd thread to read. Most of the time, folks in the Gulch are pro-science but I am seeing a lot of comments that seem to equate vaccines with poisons. This is sooo not so.

Let us take a look at that: When you catch a disease, your body has a shot at finding some prominent epitope on the surface of the organism and making antibodies specific to it. (Your body cannot always do this.) When that organism tries to infect you again, the Lymphocytes that are dedicated to that particular epitope go wild and have an orgy and reproduce all over the place. Their offspring then start to produce the antibodies that protect you from that disease.

Sometimes the epitope is unique to a single organism. Sometimes it crosses from one species, or even from one phylum to another. Examples: Getting cowpox protects you from subsequent infection from smallpox. Developing antibodies to Schistosomiasis (a parasitic worm) can protect you from malaria.

When a vaccine is made, it is done in one of three ways (that I know of; I have never been in this part of the medical industry): they can weaken the disease so that it does not cause devastation and death but is otherwise the same and make that into the vaccine, they can kill the organism and make that into the vaccine, or they can take certain epitopes from the organism and combine them with some other molecule (often albumin) and then make that the vaccine. (This last method sometimes lets your body make antibodies to organisms it could not respond to on its own - such as some cancers.) All of these methods are ways of 'delivering the epitope' into your system so that you immune response can develop antibodies to it. It is your own body that provides the immune response and hence the resistance to disease, just as if you caught the disease naturally, but with a lower death rate.

In addition to the epitope, a vaccine often contains artificial substances such as 'the stuff they grew the virus on/in' (eg egg or media), preservatives (Thimerosal is the one that most people are concerned about) and some saline. Some vaccines also have a small amount of antibiotics in them to prevent growth of bacteria. Many vaccines in the US are now available in single dose packages without Thimerosal and other preservatives.

There are undeniably idiosyncratic reactions to vaccines that cause serious problems or death. These were more common when egg was used as a growth medium and horse serum was used as a carrier. Serious reactions still occur, but they are rare. I have never seen a study that presented what I thought was well documented evidence that anything related to vaccination caused autism or a high rate of deaths. I have, however, seen a number of anti-vaccination sites that include pretty ridiculous deaths in their statistics: a girl died of unknown causes nearly 2 years after she had a vaccination; she had no symptoms that would seem to relate her death to the vaccination - but it was attributed thereto statistically.

So we have a numbers game. Let me take the measles vaccine as an example: The rate of fatal reaction to a measles vaccine is about one person per million; the rate of death for measles in an unvaccinated population is about 135 per million. So I really wonder at the resistance against getting vaccinated: it seems pretty logical to me to get vaccinations.

Now 'being forced' to do anything - eat chocolate chip cookies, even - raises my hackles. I would like to propose that most of the people on this list would consider that it is the prerogative of a private organization to require vaccinations to be valid in order to 'attend or participate in that private organization'. So one answer to the question of how to deal with vaccinations in schools and supermarkets and airplanes and Disneyland is to let the private organizations police their own territories. If you consider that the public schools are 'owned' by the populace, then they get to vote as to what to do about vaccinations...which I thought was what had occurred. (If I am wrong, please tell me.) This means that if you want to change the regulations for attendance to public schools we should discuss who 'owns' those schools and hence who has the right to make the rules pertaining to them. (Of course, that can also mean that we have to carry our proof of vaccination around with us from now on.)

Fortunately, we do not have to be perfect in our vaccination strategy. If we get 'good enough' then herd immunity will make it statistically unlikely for a disease to be transmitted through a population. If we get to that point, then the people who have immunodeficiency problems will not be at risk. And I will not be at risk of having no place for me in the hospital if I get in a car accident because all of the beds are filled with influenza victims.

Jan, wanted to be an immunologist at one time
(Ed. for punctuation & clarity)

Thanks for the response.

What I always say about modern medicine is that we don't know a lot more than we do know.

I'm a software engineer, not a doctor.

I am old enough to remember everyone gathering at the school to get the new polio vaccine and how happy we were. I have a smallpox vaccination from when we used to get them before an aggressive vaccination campaign world wide eliminated that from the planet (except in some labs, damn it.) I spent February of my second grade in a darkened room with one set of measles after the other, fearful that being in the light would damage my eyes (I have no idea if that was true).

I've spent the last twenty years running a software company that works with medical labs. We have customers all over the world and have interacted with the WHO and CDC in their epidemiology efforts. We are relatively well off here compared to the rest of the world.

But that isn't because we are somehow a heartier gene stock. We've used vaccinations to limit the scourges that formerly killed and maimed. We are but a few years of complacency from rejoining the third world.

World War I was devastating, killing over 17 million people. Then the flu of 1918 dwarfed that by killing 50 to 100 million. 20% of the world population was infected.

We have a much better medical system now, but it has its limits. I live in a middle class suburb of Los Angeles. Our valley has a little over 200,000 inhabitants. We have an excellent modern hospital with 234 beds. Or enough for .1% of our population. There are 18 ICU beds. A similar flu would now would fill the hospital and have people dying at home. And this is the good place to be.

When H1N1 was around, one of my employees, a vibrant athletic young woman went camping. She called in sick the next Monday. Within two weeks she was gone.

We should not be complacent about our victory over disease.

The great and powerful Oz..........

It's a classic definition of where your liberty and mine meet. At what point does your freedom become constrained by not doing damage to me.

Now, I am not endorsing a particular law. Private schools should be able to act in the manner that is consistent with the desires of their customers.

You're late. Anti-vaxers have already been called "terrorists". Hmmm...

Home schoolers will be relabeled as domestic terrorists and their bank accounts frozen.
Attorney General William J. Le Petomane quoted as saying, "Let the deniers starve."

I don't follow that first part. Who's nose or fist?

According to the laws being proposed, private school will have mandatory full vaccination. The only exemption other than medical is home-schooling, for now. But, home-schooled kids still go to public places. So...now what? And, please don't get angry about this. I think I understand where you're coming from - from the position that kids who aren't fully vaccinated per the schedule are a risk to everybody.

Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

To what degree does a group of people have the right to tell someone that they will not associate with someone if that person increases their risk?

Presumably the choice isn't just public school or home school. There are also private schools as well. Of course they might also require vaccinations.

"I don't like mandatory anything. I do think that requiring vaccinations for school attendance is acceptable." This is interesting. School - because, you have a bunch of people in close quarters? How about to travel in an aircraft or train? That should apply, too, right? That would follow the same logic. At the Federal level, an adult vaccine law is currently being penned. So, my question will be a relevant one soon.

I've heard different discussions on the school angle and one thing that jumps out at me is that public education has always been a right in America. Now, I think that status is being changed . "Don't want every vaccine? Go home." Last night I chatted with a mother who just finished getting her PhD (along with accompanying debt) and now is faced with the reality that she'll be staying home to home-school her kids for many years (here in California, about to pass SB277). She was almost in tears. Too bad for her, I guess.

Forced vaccination is coming. You can quote me...

Hey William. What's your experience/expertise on vaccines? I appreciate your opinion, but just want to know how it was formed.

Ah yes, the price of being part of the Apple Cult :-)

The more I study genomic variations (which influence our variable ability to manage key cellular and enzyme biochemical reactions), the clearer it is to me that 'one size fits all' therapies, which would include vaccinations, are going to have adverse, unintended or null reactions for a small but meaningful number of individuals. And this can be documented. When the government, at whatever level, insists that you cannot opt out of one of its mandated programs, your right to make an "informed choice" goes out the window.

I do believe that as we gain more understanding of individual genetic variability over the next 5-10 years, the defined dangers of vaccines to specific sub-genomic types will be uncovered, and that yes, autism, etc. are complex but definable side effects that do occur in some individuals. We may be better able to predict who will be at risk, and perhaps how to work around those risks to maximize public health protection.

In the meantime, the concept of forced vaccinations is a prime example of how when the state tells you that you must submit 'for the greater good', you need to look behind the curtain, as there is almost certainly more to the story.

To paraphrase what the Grail Knight said to Indiana Jones, "Choose wisely." (Although I have no idea how a 11th century French Knight could speak modern English;^)

So one free person should be forced to take drugs because another person with a compromised immune system demands it? Those who can't be vaccinated should take precautions to protect themselves without forcing others to take drugs at gunpoint. Forced vaccinations are an act of dictatorship, not free individuals.

There you are, another excuse not to resist. They can already track my cellphone, what's the difference if they inject a tracker?

Duh!
(Not you Salty ;^)

You can't pop the battery on an iPhone

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Neither side what's to admit that the other side has some good points. So both are forcing people in to diametrically opposing views.