unless their children are among those few who can not be vaccinated due to health problems.

If my children could not be vaccinated, I would use the fullest extent of the law to keep my child safe form anti-intellectual anti-science anti-vaxers.

Those parents should be sued for every penny they have.

If their child, or another child the kid infected, dies from any disease preventable by vaccination, the parents should be charged with manslaughter, unless the child cannot be vaccinated due to medical reasons.

How do we sort out those poor people from poor households who fall through the cracks one way or the other, though fear INS or, is citizens, might be illiterate or otherwise ignorant of the law and of what constitutes proper care?

It is likely in their country of origin, the very poor are not vaccinated due to lack of healthcare and extreme poverty. Money could be provided to local free clinics that service the Undocumented Immigrant populations in order to vaccinate everyone that walks through the door. The children of illegal immigrants attending schools could be covered state funds.

Anti-vaxxers have specifically refused to vaccinate themselves or their children. They are blatantly irresponsible.

Schools should require a complete and up to day vaccinations unless a doctor signs a wavier stating the child's physical health would be compromised if given a vaccine.

How do you propose we identify the ones who refuse on grounds of their beliefs?

Should we grill them and hold them responsible only if they admit that they don't believe in vaccination?

It's just unworkable and violates the first amendment and other civil safeguards in multiple ways.

and then they would not be in fear of being deported for showing up at a free clinic. That , of course, would cost money to the many employers who use undocumented labor to keep their profits higher.

Of course, the permit would require a full spectrum of vaccinations.

It's very workable, and does not appear to be a first amendment issue. It's no different than giving tickets to people for failing to buckle their kids into their vehicles appropriately.

You can expect to see people object to this, the same people who make sure that students are allowed to attend school without their parents' documented citizen status being called into question.

I think it's going to become complicated.

at least in my book.

This way, it eliminates cost as an excuse for parents not to vaccinate their children.

It would be a challenge to launch, successfully, any effort to get the word out that the program is free AND confidential.

The program can't, of course, work terribly well if it's entirely anonymous, though I guess that would be better than nothing.

I don't have answers, I'm just making observations.

It's interesting to watch which movements, issues, and efforts Libertarians keep in common with many on the left.

Among these are open borders and drug decriminalization. But when it comes down to how to manage things like paying for programs, it all falls apart.

Another interesting meta sort of thing to observe is the impact that technology and modernity has on these things: I guess we'll never go back to a nation by nation set of laws, values, etc. Economics require globalization of markets, I guess, and on the social values side open borders makes sense there, too.

Sad thing is that we end up losing unions, benefits, environmental standards in exchange for being part of the global economy and society.

I don't think it's worth it. I would prefer maintaining a protectionist economy and society.

We used to be that.

That was then, this is now.

for refusing to vaccinate their little children. Maybe you should look at the government sites and see exactly WHO is spreading measles. 61% adults. http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/discond/Pages/Measles.aspx

Little children with selfish parents? Only thing is that Disney equal little children. Media likes that one because it makes good headlines, but stats don't bear this one out.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/have-you-had-your-measles-shot-maybe-you-need-another-n290786


Do you homework FIRST before believing what media, and health officials, tell you.

One can be vaccinated AND contract and spread measles.

You could have 30,000 people at Disneyland, all of the them vaccinated twice with MMR and 900 of them could still be carriers and/or potential infectees.

... actually working to keep people from getting disease. Also, herd immunity. I'm sure you've heard of it.

that started the Mickey measles? Who should be sued then?

The point of herd immunity in a situation like this is that even if there were someone infected, the disease wouldn't have enough vulnerable people in the population to spread.

So if someone in that 3% enters an area where the number of people with immunity has surpassed the threshold for herd immunity, the disease wouldn't spread to vulnerable people. It has a very high chance of reaching people who have developed immunity, and whose systems shut down the disease and prevent them from becoming hosts.

If that same person arrived in an area where the threshold for herd immunity has not been reached, the disease has many more vulnerable potential hosts to spread from. Instead of only a 3% chance of the disease finding a new host, there's now a 15-25% chance of it doing so.

would that achieve Herd Immunity? Mr. Jones goes overseas, not being fully vaccinated himself, brings back something into the states. If all the little children were vaccinated, would herd immunity prevent a disease from spreading with just children being vaccinated?

My point being can herd immunity be achieved without ADULT vaccination? Why do you all assume that childhood vaccination is going to achieve that herd immunity?

How do you profess to force all vaccinations on the adult population? This is where the concept of herd immunity falls flat on its face.

Take away these little children whose parents refuse to vaccinate them, and make the kids get vaccinated. Now what do you do with their unvaccinated parents???

I think you cannot see the forest for the trees.

Adults who refuse to vaccinate either themselves or their children detract from reaching that threshold.

You still can't see that your refusal to vaccinate affects the rest of us.

You also fail to recognize that if the three percent were the only ones at risk, we wouldn't be facing this outbreak.

After the MMR shot in particular, he was suddenly uncoordinated, stumbled around, appeared confused, had a swollen abdomen for a couple of days and more or less stopped talking and language development for about a year. i was scared to death that he had been damaged. My mom survived polio back in the late 1920s so i wouldn't dream of skipping vaccines altogether, but the MMR shot was scary.

It just sucks how easy it is for people to fault parents for every dang thing they do and don't do. It's exhausting to be constantly criticized when you're doing the best you know how.

That's one of the features of being legally responsible for another human being. It isn't much fun.

Imagine your son was similarly "damaged" by a drunk driver. Would you say "well, they have the right to consume alcohol, and I don't want to blame them for every dang thing they did"?

This is utterly preventable harm. We had eradicated measles in 2000. Anti-vaxxers brought it back, because they want to believe charlatans out to take their money more than they want to believe their doctors.

Yes it's easy to loosely connect a child dead from measles to any one of several non-vaccinated children carrying measles in the vicinity.

It's also easy to connect death to starvation, or, more indirectly, to the chronic diseases caused by malnutrition by lack of access to food. What about homelessness causing exposure to the elements, crime, and other stresses? Does that impose a responsibility upon the rest of society to spring into action and avoid causing their neighbor's death? Apparently, no. Because...freedom.

And there's that whole annoying freedom-from vs. freedom-to thing. Apparently those coddled Europeans enjoy freedom *from* things like diseases. "Exceptional" Americans enjoy freedom *to* inflict whatever the heck they want.

(This general state of things is only lifted when a crying child appears on TV - then moral panic sets in, everyone points fingers for a few minutes and tries to get the opposing political party overthrown, and then the media cycle ends and we revert to the regularly scheduled programming.)

If you have a new argument that will back both plays, I'm listening.