Thought experiment

[mme_hardy]

What if people who signed opt-out forms for their children's vaccinations had to accept consequences?

"I agree that if there is an outbreak of vaccine-controllable infectious diseases in the area, my child will be forbidden to attend school until the outbreak passes. I agree that if anyone in my household contracts a vaccine-controllable disease, my household will be quarantined until risk of contagion is past. "Quarantine" means that no member of the household will be allowed to leave the house except for a medical emergency, and that nobody outside the household will be permitted to come within contagion distance of the house."

Comments

[arliss]

Anyone who refuses to vaccinate without a certified compromised immune system should be quarrantined, automatically. No, your children cannot attend public schools, nor private schools. Your house will be in a designated area, and none of your household will be permitted to leave that area without a case-by-case written pass. Your household will wear badges of a standard size, color, and shape to be easily recognized, and if any of your household is found outside desigated areas without a proper pass, you will be contained in a holding facility for other unvaccinated individuals, to ensure you don't infect the general populace.

You are a menace to society in general, and you will be treated as such.

I'm sorry. Life decisions based on personal belief is fine, but when you threaten, by merely existing, people who don't share your belief? You forfeit your rights.

(Yes, ghetto. Yes, Nazi. Justified, and no, I don't care.)

[mme_hardy]

I share your rage, but your solution is more radical than I'm comfortable with.

[recessional]

I would be unbelievably uncomfortable with the level of directed community control that would be necessary to ENFORCE this and the incredible ease of its abuse. And without enforcement, it would be meaningless.

Honestly, "if a child isn't vaccinated that child cannot attend school" worked quite well for a long time. Then we got wibbly on exemptions and started handing them out on the basis of "well I kind of don't want to".

[meara]

Yeah...except they'd probably sign it self-righteously and then sue the first time they were actually going to be quarantined

[nestra]

That was exactly my thought. Lawsuits.

[laurashapiro]

I like it.

I read yesterday, though, that the vast majority of unvaccinated people is due to issues of access, not choice.

UPDATED: Here's the article: http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2013/05/vaccines-whooping-cough

[mme_hardy]

That's important to know; thank you. Government vaccination outreach clinics would seem to be a very good idea.

[adrian_turtle]

I find it disingenuous to use information from 1990 to show the difficulty with affording vaccination. In the years since then, many places have gone to quite a bit of trouble to let children have preventative health care, and Obamacare lets adults have it too.

Government vaccination outreach clinics would seem to be a very good idea.

Doesn't California have county boards of health where you can go and get vaccinated for free? It was a thing in New York 20 years ago, and in Michigan 40 years ago. And the towns around here schedule "flu clinics" in the fall, a few times/town, when you can go get vaccinated (if you haven't done it at the drugstore or supermarket or doctor's office or or or.)

[adrian_turtle]

There has been a lot of work at the state and county level to reduce access barriers to vaccination. Especially for kids. Parents have to take their kids to a health care provider anyhow, (because schools require a physical exam before registration, in the states I know of), and then they can either get them vaccinated or fill out a form saying they have religious/philosophical objections to vaccination. The vaccination doesn't cost any money, with Obamacare. And they don't need to make another trip.

I know a few people can fall through the cracks of any system. But I'd be really surprised if there were huge numbers of families who had trouble accessing basic vaccines for their kids. Not compared to the 5% of religious/philosophical opt-outs in California private kindergartens.

[nineveh_uk]

I have always wondered (as a non-US person) when this issue comes up in a USA context whether vaccines are actually free there, and easy to get. There's no legal requirement for vaccination in the UK*, but there doesn't really have to be when you have a system that is fully geared up to pushing parents and children through the hoops so that the minimum possible dope out. Levels of MMR vaccination did drop during the Wakefield scaremongering, but they're now back up, and that's been achieved ultimately through communication, trust and accessibility (catch-up is easy for those who missed as young children).

*Other than the Hepatitis A immunity thing for certain medical professionals.

[neotoma]

I wonder if the old quarantine/public hygiene laws are still on the books. Because they might have to start enforcing them if they are, given how infectious measles is (also, mumps in the NHL, wtf?!).

[heyokish]

It didn't even *occur* to me that USians had to pay for standard vaccinations--given that this is a population-level good rather than just an individual happy thing. Man, the things I take for granted.


(That said, as a child I got mumps. and measles. and whooping cough. And they were all nasty, but I had no lasting damage from any of them because I was robust. and very lucky.)

[mme_hardy]

Whooping cough has always sounded particularly horrible to me. IIRC some of the children's books I grew up on had kids sidelined for months recovering from it.

I remember mumps as being very painful. Both my children got chicken pox *just* before the vaccine was approved. That wasn't fun for anybody, and both of them have small scars from it.

[rinue]

I've lived mainly in Massachusetts and Texas, which are fairly opposite politically and both have high vaccination rates. In both states, you're not allowed to enroll in school without being vaccinated, the vaccines are free, and it's very hard to get a personal exemption (like, doctors have to sign off that it would be a problem for your kid, or you have to go to court to prove it's a serious religious problem. A parent can't just tick a box on a form.)

Part of the problem with systems that try to fix herd immunity after there's already an outbreak is that most diseases are communicable before they show symptoms. Measles symptoms for instance emerge about 24 hours after you start being contagious.

[mme_hardy]

Massachusetts/Texas sounds much more sensible on that vector. Our sloppy loosy-goosy opt-out system is disastrous.

Yes, measles is pretty much a public health nightmare. Very contagious, communicable before symptoms show, and the first symptoms look exactly like a head cold, which we all know you can walk around during.

[dejla]

Works for me!!

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I would fucking LOVE to see this implemented. I have two dear friends who are deathly allergic to eggs (which means they're not ABLE to get vaccinated) and who have compromised immune systems. It drives me up the fucking wall when they get exposed to shit because others believe in conspiracy theories. UGH. Nyargh. ETC.

....I have feels. Obvs.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I have seen stories in the LA Times of families complaining about being quarantined after their kid gets measles. Flames. On. The. Side. Of. My. Face.

But anything that brings home to non-vaccinators that they have just volunteered to experience the downside of the public health system would be appreciated.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those kids who was never vaccinated because my parents were religious and claimed it was unnecessary because God would either protect me or heal me. o.O

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

Ugh. How many of the childhood diseases did you get?

I was born in 1959, so a lot of the modern vaccines hadn't been invented yet. I got at least one form of measles, mumps, and scarlet fever, which is a fulminating strep infection. I was terrified I was going mad because I couldn't remember how to do long division.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I'd be in favor of this and also of making them watch videos/look at photos of people dying of every disease they don't want their kids vaccinated against.

It also makes me angry that given that they believe that vaccines can cause autism, the underlying belief is that they'd rather have their child die than be autistic.

[sabotabby]

I like the way you think.

We were keeping unvaccinated kids out of schools for awhile but I think there was a challenge to that.

[ckd]

Parents can't let their kid walk home alone from the park a block away without someone calling the cops, but "lol deadly diseases, I won't vaccinate my kids because I'm taking my medical advice from an actress" gets a pass. Grrargh.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Add "... plus I agree to plead nola contendre to any tort suit brought against me by any person (or their family) in the jurisdiction who contracts measles, until such time as my child is vaccinated or reaches the age of majority".

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

Born in 1952, so the only vaccines I got early on were the Salk (injected) polio vaccine (several times) and small pox. I was in my tweens when I got the Sabin polio vaccine and a measles shot when they became available. I had rubella and chicken pox, but got passed by when both of my younger brothers (and then roommates) got mumps and scarlet fever (we were quarantined for the latter - that sucked).

I use the Wakefield anti-vax fraud as an example in my class when we discuss the scientific method. (This semester there was the added bonus of having the whole Disneyland thing make the news a few days before, making it even more topical than usual.)