Mandatory Vaccinations

[umbarsc]

This discussion was sort of developing in the swine flu vaccine topic, but this is a far more interesting topic so I think it needs its own thread.

What do you think about mandatory vaccines? Is the government justified in forcing people to get vaccines?

Personally, I think that maintaining herd immunity makes it a matter of public safety so the government is perfectly justified in enforcing mandatory vaccinations. And for vital vaccinations that parents refuse to give their children, I think that it's a matter of medical neglect and the government is again entitled to give the child necessary vaccines.

For this discussion, let's assume that claims like "causes autism" and the like are bullshit, but that there are real but extremely rare side-effects to using vaccines.

 

[Cathy]

Everybody has a right not to vaccinate him- or herself. Government-enforced vaccinations have quite a few problems. They all stem from the fact that weighing the positives and negatives of getting vaccinated is a personal choice, one which the government should not make for you.

Plenty of people don't like needles. I'm one of them. I've evaluated the statistics on the H1N1 flu and concluded it is not worth the anxiety of getting vaccinated to avoid a negligible chance of serious illness. Who is the government to say otherwise? But this isn't just a libertarian argument; there's also a practical aspect to this. Either we consider it reasonable to subject people to anxiety-inducing situations (the stress of which can be rather extreme) against their will, or we have to allow for people to appeal to opt out. I find the former possibility to be barbaric.

The latter possibly requires some sort of authority to evaluate the appeals, and this is a nontrivial logistical concern, a waste of money for sure. Worse than being financially irresponsible, such an authority would have to develop criteria that probably would not fit everybody. How can a state authority be expected to weigh the relevant variables (your anxiety versus the health concerns) more accurately than you yourself can? Would you need a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder to qualify to opt out? (I personally find the psychiatric disorder model and the concept of psychiatric disorder to both be highly bogus, but that is not the topic of this thread, and whether the diagnoses represent relevant medical details is tangential to the fact that they are the type of thing such an authority would consider.) Would you need some past history of incidents at vaccination sites? If just your word is good enough, then the same people who don't get a vaccination now (for any reason) would just opt out. As far as I can tell, the only practical way to implement mandatory vaccination would be to make it mandatory for everybody, even the people for whom it causes major anxiety issues, and this is unacceptable.

In addition to anxiety concerns, other negatives might include scepticism about the efficacy of the vaccine. The government is not properly positioned to evaluate these concerns for everybody. It is a personal choice, one that affects the integrity of your own body. You should have the right to control what goes into your body.

Moving past your personal rights, what is even the state's interest in restricting your freedom in this particular instance? The only relevant argument I can imagine applies if the state is subsidising the health care of people afflicted with the disease. I'll divert the question of whether the state should do this at all to some other discussion and note here only that the solution to this is simple: people who choose not to vaccinate themselves should have to pay the full cost of their care.

 

[penpad]

I just dont trust the gov't. If they start mandating vaccinations and such we're in for a world of hurt. Think of pesticides they sprayed in the 50s that decades later were discovered to cause cancer. Now imagine that the people were made to breath it because it's "safe." Now im not saying vaccinations are unsafe, for the most part they are. When you give someone power like that though, they're going to use it, for better or worse.

 

[VKCA]

Besides healthcare officials I don't think that anybody should be forced to get the flu-shot. With health care officials coming in contact with the amount of people they do, it would not do any good for them to be contaminating them. If there was a pandemic, I would certainly want health care officials to be immunized so they wouldn't have to miss work. I think I would hit them if they said they were afraid of needles too. Are other immunizations mandatory? I never really considered opting out of getting needles at school, I never even knew if I could. Are they?

 

[cim]

I just dont trust the gov't. If they start mandating vaccinations and such we're in for a world of hurt. Think of pesticides they sprayed in the 50s that decades later were discovered to cause cancer. Now imagine that the people were made to breath it because it's "safe." Now im not saying vaccinations are unsafe, for the most part they are. When you give someone power like that though, they're going to use it, for better or worse.

I don't think people didn't know what DDT did, but companies just shut up about it. Ideally, a government would review this kind of thing before mandating it. (What kind of government would force feed you pesticides? I'm confused)

Regardless, the government shouldn't force ordinary people to do anything, including vaccinations. Though requiring, say, doctors to get flu vaccines is different. They're attempting to uphold medical standards there across the board, and it's hard to treat a disease you yourself spread.

 

[umbarsc]

Obviously "trivial" vaccines like the flu shot should never, ever be mandatory. But what about things like measles or polio?

I'm primarily concerned with immunizing infants and young children, as they are the most vulnerable and unable to make their own choices. I think this makes things like autonomy and personal choice irrelevant, because young children simply don't have any free choice when it comes to medicine. Either their parents or some other source is going to be making their decisions for them, so I would rather that choice be in the hands of a more objective source than one that can be so easily influenced by bias and things like skeptic sites and media scares.

And if the government is wrong about vaccinations, they will be facing responsibility, unlike parents. If a parent is wrong, they made the wrong medical choice. If the government is wrong, they are fucked, which is reason enough for them to be objective.

 

[Forlong]

Obviously "trivial" vaccines like the flu shot should never, ever be mandatory. But what about things like measles or polio?

I'm primarily concerned with immunizing infants and young children, as they are the most vulnerable and unable to make their own choices. I think this makes things like autonomy and personal choice irrelevant, because young children simply don't have any free choice when it comes to medicine. Either their parents or some other source is going to be making their decisions for them, so I would rather that choice be in the hands of a more objective source than one that can be so easily influenced by bias and things like skeptic sites and media scares.

And if the government is wrong about vaccinations, they will be facing responsibility, unlike parents. If a parent is wrong, they made the wrong medical choice. If the government is wrong, they are fucked, which is reason enough for them to be objective.

Aren't nontrivial vaccinations already mandatory for children to enter school?

 

[CaptKirby]

Colin, you are assuming people are smart enough to make this choice. A lot definitely are not, so it is a lot easier for governments to just go ahead and save lives without having to convince dumbfucks that their lives need saving. There are much better ways to commit suicide than scraping across metal.

 

[cim]

Colin, you are assuming people are smart enough to make this choice. A lot definitely are not, so it is a lot easier for governments to just go ahead and save lives without having to convince dumbfucks that their lives need saving. There are much better ways to commit suicide than scraping across metal.

Why is it the Government's job to assume they know better? Either they're well educated and being forced into something they don't want after risk evaluation, or they're idiotic in which case why should the Government protect them from themselves?

 

[b0b3rt]

Did my post get deleted?
Also, CaptKirby, you can make the same argument for pretty much anything else regarding the ability to make a choice.

 

[Griffin]

An argument I haven't seen in this thread yet is that vaccination fights the spreading of a disease. By not getting a vaccine, you are at risk of getting the disease, which in turn puts you at risk of spreading the disease. In forgoing a vaccination, you are, in a way, endangering others' health.

I don't think that, for something a simple as a flu, there should be mandated vaccination, but for something far more dangerous and/or contagious I wouldn't discard the idea. However, I don't have any grasp of the numbers on this issue, so I'm not going to guess about how bad a disease has to be for me to support mandated vaccination.

 

[umbarsc]

I don't buy the "government should protect you from yourself" argument, so I would be against mandatory vaccinations if loss of herd immunity only affects those who chose not to get vaccinated. However, due to things like vaccine failure, even those who were vaccinated are put at risk. And if we are talking about children who didn't make the choice in the first place, it's not protecting the children from themselves, it's protecting them from their parents (which we all should agree is a legitimate function of the government).

Either they're well educated and being forced into something they don't want after risk evaluation

The problem with this assuming "risk evaluation" is that it makes the disease cyclical. A disease is a threat to the public, the public immunizes, threat goes down. With the threat level down, people decide that it's not worth the risk of vaccinating (whether it's due to actual, rare side-effects, or they see bullshit vaccine controversies and decide to play it safe), and the disease comes back. The reasoning used by people isn't rational, it's narrow and short-term.

An argument I haven't seen in this thread yet is that vaccination fights the spreading of a disease. By not getting a vaccine, you are at risk of getting the disease, which in turn puts you at risk of spreading the disease. In forgoing a vaccination, you are, in a way, endangering others' health.

To those who haven't done much research on the topic, that's basically what herd immunity is. It stops the spread of the disease because the majority of the population is immune, which makes even those who weren't vaccinated safe from the disease. However, an important part of this is that it requires a huge amount of the population to be vaccinated to be effective (it's impossible to tell for certain, but the minimum is about ~90% for most diseases I believe), which is where mandatory vaccination comes into play.

 

[CaptKirby]

Did my post get deleted?
Also, CaptKirby, you can make the same argument for pretty much anything else regarding the ability to make a choice.

Yeah but this is not one that really restricts their choices at all. This is them trying to save lives in the most efficient manner possible. War and disease are pretty surely high dealers in death!

 

[b0b3rt]

Forcing people to use condoms during recreational, unsupervised sex would eliminate AIDS in whatever country it was implemented in basically 1 generation. Should we do that too?

 

[CaptKirby]

Obviously people are never going to let their sex lives be looked in on, so that is just a stupid comparison. That being said, OF COURSE men should wear condoms with people they do not know for certain are STD free! The risk is not worth the better feeling sex.

 

[umbarsc]

First, how could that possibly be implemented? If there was a workable AIDS vaccine, there actually could be debate as to whether or not it could be implemented, though I haven't actually thought about it.

Secondly, if you are having unprotected sex, you are knowingly taking the chance that you might get AIDS. You can't choose not to breathe in to protect yourself from measles.

 

[b0b3rt]

You could take measures to drastically reduce the chances of contracting any communicable disease.
itt you don't choose to get gang raped, either

But that's beside the point. Maybe it wasn't the best example >.<

 

[cim]

You could take measures to drastically reduce the chances of contracting any communicable disease.

That's a massive generalization and for air and contact transmitted diseases like H1N1, there isn't really all that much you can do. Avoiding physical contact, quarantining the sick, washing your hands, and not touching your face help, but that's all you can really do. To say that there are prevention mechanisms equivalent to condom use for most diseases is a touch absurd.

 

[b0b3rt]

You could totally isolate yourself from humanity, go live in the mountains (?)
It's a drastic solution, and again it was just an example >.>
I'm sure there are other situations where the government could "save peoples' lives" at the expense of curtailing choice/freedom

 

[Surgo]

While I'd say no for stuff like the yearly flu vaccine, vaccinations should absolutely be 100% mandatory for deadly diseases (especially in children).

This issue goes beyond personal freedom. The safety of immunocompromised children (like, say, kids with leukemia) who cannot themselves get vaccinated is pretty much dependent on the "safety of the herd" and making sure that none of the herd gets the disease. If your children can be vaccinated, they absolutely should be vaccinated to protect those who cannot.

 

[Tangerine]

They all stem from the fact that weighing the positives and negatives of getting vaccinated is a personal choice, one which the government should not make for you.

---

Moving past your personal rights, what is even the state's interest in restricting your freedom in this particular instance? The only relevant argument I can imagine applies if the state is subsidising the health care of people afflicted with the disease. I'll divert the question of whether the state should do this at all to some other discussion and note here only that the solution to this is simple: people who choose not to vaccinate themselves should have to pay the full cost of their care.

Most of the times, I will agree with you. However, I'm not going to say that this is always the case. I think the Government has the right to force mandatory vaccinations on certain cases - depending on how fast the disease spreads and the mortality rate.

Of course, in many of those cases, you will make that personal decision that it is now worth being vaccinated. However, a vaccination issue is hardly simply a personal decision - there is an externality involved in such a case. The idea is that you emit a positive externality by getting the flu shot, since it reduces the chance of you obtaining the disease and spreading it to the populace. You getting the disease is a negative externality, since by catching the disease you will spread it to others.

Hence, depending on the severity of the disease I think mandatory vaccinations are absolutely necessary. Should the state use this power often? They definitely should not, but only in actual pandemics. Infringing upon the freedom to choose is pretty serious, but I think there are cases were the government is absolutely justified in doing so.

 

[Ascalon]

While I also believe that the flu scare is overblown and not a serious threat, I don't think this decision should remain in the hand of ordinary citizens since in a real and dangerous epidemic you will inevitably find those who believe, with whatever flawed reasoning, that they should not be vaccinated and thus endanger the population at large.

Let's do a simple cost benefit analysis (assuming first a serious and then a trivial disease):

Costs:
Possilbility of minor, short term pain and anxiety.
The price of the vaccinations and their administration.
About half an hour of everyone's day.

Benefits:
Protects the population from a serious disease which could leave a significant portion with permanent consequences. Financial costs of this are also non trivial, since medical aid and the ability of the population to do productive work will be put under heavy pressure.

OR

Protects population against fairly minor illness which could cause temporary inconvenciences at worst.

It is fairly evident that in the event of a serious disease, the imposition is entirely justified while the case for minor diseases is far less solid. However, such a decision should be left in the hands of doctors. The fuss about the swine flu seems to be largely political since it has a tiny fatality rate and a lot of media attention.

I really don't think personal freedom is a defence for serious diseases though, since the infringement of personal freedom is very minor and the protection if offers the population at large is a major benefit.

 

[cantab]

No government has the right to impose any medical procedure on any part of its citizenry. That I make a principle. NO exceptions. The infringement upon liberty is not minor, it's about as major as it could be.

It would also be stupid in practice. Many people mistrust their governments, and rightly so (the British Labour government certainly does not have a good record of honesty). A mandated vaccine could and I hope would result in mass civil disobedience. If an injection's being forced on you, why should you believe what the government says is in it?

I understand the idea of herd immunity. That makes vaccination a MORAL obligation. The government should not be legislating it.

Healthcare workers - it can be made a requirement for them to stay in their job. Even for them, legally requiring them to be vaccinated is wrong. Besides, they ought to be the best qualified of anyone to judge whether they should or shouldn't have it.

I'm glad no-one in this thread has mentioned 'national security'. That seems to be the government's excuse these days when they want to steal our civil liberties.

 

[Surgo]

I understand the idea of herd immunity. That makes vaccination a MORAL obligation. The government should not be legislating it.

It's a moral issue in the same way that "murdering people is wrong" is a moral issue which the government legislates anyway. It's a moral issue that can and does affect other people -- and once it starts affecting other people besides the one making the choice, the government absolutely should get involved.

 

[cantab]

No, murder is a moral and legal prohibition. There are very few moral obligations governments legislate (There aren't many legal obligations on individuals full stop, compared to the prohibitions, or the obligations on organisations). Some laws requiring reporting certain things. Educating your children. Certainly not having a substance injected into you, the contents of which you cannot verify yourself.