Canada just lost its measles-free status. So here’s the question…
If an unvaccinated child spreads measles to someone else’s kid, why shouldn’t the parents be liable in small-claims court?
I’m not talking about criminal charges, just basic responsibility. If your choice creates the risk you should have to prove you weren’t the reason someone else’s child got sick.
Is that unreasonable?
Offering a generous tax credit for proof of vaccination ought to resolve the problem easily enough, given the simple-minded and grift-oriented nature of your average antivaxxer.
I wonder if the numbers could back that up? Like the cost of treatment of an unvaccinated child getting a preventable disease, versus a vaccinated child getting the same disease? Also, the number of children in each group? No vaccine is 100% after all.
There could be an actual cost to the healthcare system for choosing to not vaccinate. If that’s the case, creating an incentive like a tax credit for vaccinating could be an effective way of reducing cost overall.
I’d like to see someone study this, if they haven’t already.
It seems so fundamental to the equation “how much of a village it should take”. To me, that’s the only hard metric that matters (not on an individual level, by any means, but averaged out, over the long term trend).
What is the cost to each of us as individuals so that we may all, on average, enjoy a better quality of life than we do today.
While I subscribe to that same kind of thinking, others will not. They will see it as being forced to share the rewards of their hard work with others who, in their opinion, didn’t work as hard. Put another way, they see themselves as having taken on the responsibility of caring and providing for themselves, and policies like that would force them to also care for someone else who isn’t meeting that responsibility.
It’s a simple take, but not completely wrong. There will be people who will take advantage of others generosity, shirking the responsibility to care and provide for themselves, and keep demanding more. And there’s also the reality of government waste and corruption siphoning that “hard work” away.
It ignores the many realities out there, like how not everyone gets the same starting point in life and not everyone has the same abilities. But its simplicity is its strength. It explains things in a way that is easy to understand. I worked hard, they didn’t. I didn’t get handouts when I was struggling, so why should they.
This is why I think the way to convince these people to do the right thing is to reward those who do vaccinate with a tax credit or payout. It makes it fair across the board, and makes those who still choose not to vaccinate understand the cost of that choice. Or at least see that there is a cost to the choice.
A study, that could give a hard number of the average cost per patient, broken down by vaccinated and unvaccinated, could go a long way to proving the point. The recent measles outbreak would be a great place to start.
Naw gotta hit em in the pocketbooks.
Yeah, I’m gonna go out on what feels like a very sturdy limb here and say that herd immunity wouldn’t be compromised if everyone who could did, and everyone who can’t didn’t.
And I’m pretty sure that we are:
A) not referring to this demographic in our thread
B) in general, ok with legit medical exemptions, see above for why.
I’d love to see how much time and effort it’d take to convince chuds to approve another expense on socialized vaccines.
I’m personally of the opinion that refusing to vaccinate your kids should not be a choice parents get to make. Just like how you can’t choose to starve your children, no matter how deeply and truly you believe that we can draw all our necessary sustenance from the air.
In Canada we have a legal concept called the “Duty of persons to provide necessaries.”
Here’s the relevant legal code:
215 (1) Every one is under a legal duty (a) as a parent, foster parent, guardian or head of a family, to provide necessaries of life for a child under the age of sixteen years;
https://www.criminalnotebook.ca/index.php/Failing_to_Provide_the_Necessaries_of_Life_(Offence)
I firmly believe that vaccinations should be deemed one of the “necessaries of life” under this article of the criminal code. Like food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. You shouldn’t have a choice in this matter. We shouldn’t even be talking about whether or not that choice harms someone else’s kid, because that’s actually beside the point. At a basic level, we as a society have already agreed that children’s right to be properly sheltered and cared for outweighs their parents rights to decide how they live. The idea that there should be an exception for vaccines - something that can mean the difference between life and death - is absolutely ridiculous.
Excuse me, I’m breath-tarian /s
Parents who don’t vaccinate their children without a good medical reason should be treated as any other parent who intentionally abuses, harms, mistreats, or abandons their children, simple as that.
If they harm other people on top of that, then that should probably count as attempted murder plus aggravated assault and battery, or some equivalent.
It’s a shame that rampant wilful idiocy with intent to cause harm and mayhem isn’t a criminal offence, though, because they should also be charged with that.
You know, we eliminated smallpox in the wild, and mostly eliminated polio, by giving vaccines. Fuck these moronic idiotic parents not vaxxing their kiddos. It ABSOLUTELY should count as child abuse to not vax your kid.
Completely agree. I said more in my own comment, but if you’re interested, here’s the relevant criminal code that backs up what you’re saying; https://www.criminalnotebook.ca/index.php/Failing_to_Provide_the_Necessaries_of_Life_(Offence)
Failing to Provide the Necessaries of Life
I’m not fluent in legalese, but that seems about right, yes.
I’d argue that parents should be liable to the state, not the victim or their family. This is a societal issue, and civil liability won’t fix it.
Liable to the state but not your fellow citizen? I just don’t see it that way.
Otherwise we go the American route and end up fighting amongst ourselves.
If it’s between the parents and the victim, then our government has failed us.
We are not litigious as Canadians, but maybe we should be in this aspect.
Where do you draw the line ?
Also how do you sue/prove the 4th grader’s parents when a kindergartner catches measles. Maybe it was the kid down the street who spread it.
Probably better to strip them of their free Heath care and bill them for extra costs.
Actuaries love sorting out probable numbers by statistical groups
Because we have loser pays laws for civil suits.
I don’t disagree with this mindset, but I do want to say that it should be on the plaintiff to prove your child caused the problem rather than the defendant to prove they did not. Proving a negative is damn near impossible in court.
I don’t disagree with this mindset, but I do want to say that it should be on the plaintiff to prove your child caused the problem rather than the defendant to prove they did not. Proving a negative is damn near impossible in court.
If your choices raise everyone else’s risk, it’s fair that you carry some of the burden. Courts deal in probability every day.
No, we can’t start throwing out burden of proof when it suits us.
I’ve argued elsewhere in this thread that the solution is to obligate parents to provide vaccinations, just like they’re obligated to provide food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. This is the basic legal duty of care that all parents have towards their children, and it should extend to vaccines. This is both a logical application of existing law - rather than requiring new law - and incredibly simple to prove in court. If parents are obligated to vaccinate their kids, all a cop or social worker has to do is ask for the proof of vaccination. There’s no balance of proof to consider, and no knotty problems of untangling exactly how someone else’s kid got sick.
Honestly, I’d settle for disclosure, especially now that they’re removing school requirements in some states. It would be worth it to me to know which kids/ parents to keep my kids away from.
Agreed - it’s pretty unlikely that you’d be able to prove something like that.
I suppose you could try to apply precedents surrounding HIV disclosure, but I think it’d be a tough sell.
Edit: And to be clear, even in that situation, we’re talking about disclosure, not actual treatment-related choices.
It’s not an unreasonable idea. The parents should absolutely be held liable.
Exact responsibility would be virtually impossible to prove, though. Even a lawyer who graduated at the bottom of their class from a terrible law school could easily defend the accused parents.
Its impossible to prove you caught an airborne disease from a specific individual.
If it can be proven. Yes. But there are too many variables to be able to prove it usually.
Antibodies?
I’m assuming you mean that the kid that wasn’t vaccinated wouldn’t have antibodies in his system? But how do you tie that to “This is definitely the kid that gave the measles to my child”.
Could have been that kid in his class that is unvaccinated. It could have been a kid he hung out with on the playground, or a kid he walked past in a mall.
There’s no way to prove beyond reasonable doubt that just because the kid in his class wasn’t vaxxed, that he was necessarily the specific vector for your child to get measles. It’s impossible. To many variables.
Liable for what? Medical expenses, funeral costs? Expected life earnings? What about the homeschool/tutoring expenses of immunocompromised kids that didn’t catch measles because the were withdrawn from school due to fear of an outbreak. I’m not trying to throw out straw men to muddy the water, but where do you draw the line between someone’s actions and their consequences.
I’m not talking about criminal charges, just basic responsibility.
Maybe we should be. There are consequences to reckless driving and drunk driving independent of whether you actually harm someone because this actions are inherently dangerous to others.
Im not a judge.
How are you going to deal with pesky things like religious freedoms and the Mennonites/similar cults?
They are still free to practice their religion.
And if vaccinations are against their religion? I’m not siding with them btw just curious how other people want to handle cult members in regards to holding them liable.
I still think they should be held liable, this is a preventable disease.
This right here, there’s nothing preventing the religion from being followed. And being in a religion doesn’t make you not responsible for your actions.
I doubt they’d see it that way and pull out the ol’ persecution complex but I agree with you guys. They can quarantine at least.
“Religious freedom” doesn’t give people the right to endanger public health.
Fun fact: ancient religious texts don’t have shit to say about modern medical practices.
If they choose to not vaccinate their child, fine. But they shouldn’t then expose other people to their children’s infections.
It gets messier when they are communicable before symptoms are showing. But if my Sally and your Bobby were at a party with 10 other kids, and the next day bobby is showing symtoms, and then a week later a binch of kids at the party are as well, then they should be held responsible.
Especially if they had reason to believe Bobby had been exposed to it days prior.
Make your choices, but if your religious choices are that important to you, then account for how that impacts other choices you make, and don’t put other people at risk.
Quarrentine - No public schools or markets, or public places if there is an outbreak and unvaccinated.
Ignore them when they harm society. They don’t get the freedom to commit murder and they shouldn’t get the freedom to not follow public health requirement just because they have some mumbo jumbo excuse.
Gonna show my age here and I’m not from the USA, but I remember in the 80s the doctors and nurses would come to the school one day, we’d all have to line up, and we all got vaccinated with something. Pretty sure there was no parental consent involved.
We’ve gotten a bit too soft on some things.
I got those needle parades in the 90’s in the area I grew up in (Atlantic Canada), in much the same manner.
It wasn’t a choice for us and we didn’t have outbreaks.
Religious freedom can go suck a dick when it harms other people.
According to the Church of the JustPulledANewReligionOutOfMyAss, our Chief Papa Ghost said I need to break your kneecaps then push you onto a busy highway: your sacrifice is nothing personal, but if I don’t do it, I’ll spend eternity being spanked by fire goats. Doesn’t make sense to me either, but Chief Papa Ghost works in mysterious ways, so I don’t have a choice, you see? It’s my religion!
…except if I actually tried that, I’d spend the rest of my life in prison, cuz even religious freedom doesn’t give me the right to kill people ‘because God’.
At least not directly: I can still kill you without consequence by spreading a completely avoidable pathogen to you, but giving that scenario the “wtf?!” treatment is pretty much why OP made this thread, lol.
Now if you’ll excuse me, Chief Papa Ghost had a kid out of wedlock with a lower-dimensional being, and it just so happens that he’s made of BBQ twist Fritos and Rootbeer, so I’m gonna go commune.
You keep them out of public schools to reduce the chance of them exposing other people as much as possible. Their co-religionists aren’t likely to press charges, and many of these extreme religious groups don’t want their kids in mainstream schools anyway.
In other words, you can use government-funded schools or you can refuse vaccination (and pay for your kids to attend a private school that allows unvaccinated students, or homeschool them and do the work yourself). You can’t have both. That’s how school vaccine mandates are supposed to work in the first place. We’ve just gotten way too lax about upholding and enforcing them.
Not an antivaxxer, but that sounds difficult to prove. Even for mere liability, how would you demonstrate on a balance of probabilities that someone got sick specifically because someone else didn’t vaccinate?
(Also I really hope small-claims court isn’t the appropriate avenue for trying something as serious as infecting a child with measles)
We’re dangerously close to “it’s illegal to be contagious”.
this is the disturbing reality of the current attitude. People have no idea how important body sovereignty is.
I think most people are ok with you choosing to not vaccinate. The problem is when you choose to inflict that decision on others.
Not vaccinating and not isolating yourself is violating everyone else’s body sovereignty.
I don’t care if you host diseases. I absolutely do care about you spreading them.
Removed by mod
Except that we are also actively destroying species immunity and replacing that with a different layer of existence - technology.
No, we are boosting our immunity.
We don’t see natural immunity spike when there are less people taking the vaccine. Which is why Canada is no longer measles free.
The circumstance of dying from a disease due to biological weakness has a suppressive affect on phenotypes which don’t provide an immune system capable of fighting the disease. This is basic.
I am not making the argument that we are destroying species immunity to any particular disease by getting vaccines, which is clearly false. When you get vaccines or get a disease, the result is some degree of immunity to that specific disease (or some degree of immunity or maiming or death, in the case of getting disease).
Rather, bolstering the immune system with vaccines is a crutch that, while it may be the best option for an individual to choose, does still permit phenotypes which cannot handle the disease to be passed to offspring.
Obviously, this is a slow process. But also, just as obviously, someone who chooses not to vaccinate and thereby dies from a disease would have, otherwise, potentially passed that weakness on to their children.
this isn’t bullshit or a niche theory. It’s basic evolution, but in an area that is hard for some people to accept because they don’t like it, and want to distance themselves from death, and feel like they are outside of the realm of natural necessity, or because they just can’t conceive of biological robustness being that important, or being truly subject to any kind of degradation. But that is a failing to see the scope of the necessity to sustain our genetic robustness - not enforced by some creepy nazi idea is what’s “perfect”, through eugenics, but through sovereign choice.
And yes, making vaccines available does benefit the species as a whole, because we increase the ways we can fight disease. But those who fight a disease naturally, and actual actually accept the consequences of that, are exercising their individual rights in a way that is also beneficial to the species, by reducing the instances of problematic phenotypes, and (hopefully) breeding if they survive.
IMO vaccine and evolutionary biology is very nuanced, and depends a lot on the individual genetics, type of pathogen, type of vaccine, etc. The net result from people dying off might be moot, and could even be harmful.
Immune science is often taught as an arms race, but that model tends to imply that both sides are constantly gaining beneficial traits. That’s true in some cases, like the fever response, which is a beneficial trait we gained at some point, and it continues to be useful.
Meanwhile, other phenotypes are very context dependent for whether they are helpful or harmful. HLA (human leukocyte antigen) for example, that’s how our T-cells identify between ‘self’ and ‘foreign’ particles. We rely on the tremendous diversity of HLA alleles in the human population in order to survive new diseases. Someone’s HLA alleles can be a poor match for a current disease, but very helpful for a future disease. Having them die off now would be a bad thing. Similarly, someone with an HLA combination that makes them more effective against a current disease, may be ineffective against a future disease. Another simpler one is the ABO blood types, where different pathogens (ex. malaria, cholera, smallpox) are better/worse at infecting cells with certain blood types, evidenced by the different proportions of blood types in regions endemic to such diseases.
Evolution is messy, and the evolution of the immune system is messier still. Even if we only look at it from a simplified Darwinian evolution perspective, having genetic diversity might be more important than any shedding of ‘weaker’ alleles from people dying off because their natural immunity couldn’t handle a particular infection.
I appreciate this response, and agree with much of it.
There’s some grey-area stuff:
Evolution is messy, and the evolution of the immune system is messier still. Even if we only look at it from a simplified Darwinian evolution perspective, having genetic diversity might be more important than any shedding of ‘weaker’ alleles from people dying off because their natural immunity couldn’t handle a particular infection.
True, but in theory, a good chunk of people would be taking vaccines - and so while there’s a selective pressure (mostly on those willing to undergo it), overall diversity would be maintained.
and, as an aside – alas, simplified is the domain and utility of science. It’s how we grasp anything natural at all.
…there are some tidbits I do disagree with, though. mainly:
Someone’s HLA alleles can be a poor match for a current disease, but very helpful for a future disease. Having them die off now would be a bad thing.
While that would be a bad thing, it’s not like there’s selective pressure against having the HLA alleles that would be good for a future disease - more, just that there’s selective pressure against not having one for the current disease. Let’s say that the theoretical future-disease-preventing HLA alleles are randomly distributed, and that the incidence of death from a current disease roughly matches the incidence of death from car accidents, then the car accidents have just as much of a deleterious affect on the future as the current disease does. That’s like the Christian argument “The baby you’re about to abort could be the one that comes up with the cure for cancer.” …sure, but it could by Hitler 3.0, too.
The very multifaceted complexity that goes into the entire process of how animals (including us) handle disease has a couple knowable facets:
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It works, generally speaking, over the long term, and often enough in the short term
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we have added new means of gaining immunity, but with that we also reduce selective pressures on the species, not just for disease-specific immune responses, but any other traits (including but not limited to rapidity of immune response) that impact the capacity to handle and survive a disease
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it is clearly selection pressure that has led to effective immune systems in the first place
but even aside from that, the following are my opinions, and though I’m open to the possibility, I doubt they’ll change today:
- taking away the body sovereignty of an individual is an abominable act which reduces diversity, and harms the species as a whole, in many different ways, some subtle, some less so
- the benefits of body sovereignty far outweigh the detriments of it, particularly since we, by and large, have a medical answer for those who wish to be protected from a disease but don’t want to rely on the natural biological process to do so, but would rather use a method that involves a technological support framework.
- evolution works, and although it always costs lives, it’s a prerequisite for life. We don’t evolve out of evolution.
edit: btw, thanks for the genuine civil discourse, I enjoy it.
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The most disturbing thing about reality is that we have morons opting their children and neighbors into preventable diseases because of absurd lies they read on Facebook.
Nah. It’s not concerning that otherwise intelligent people can’t figure out how to deal with their own lives without resorting to controlling others.
Anyone have tips on how to not get stabbed without forcing other people to stop stabbing?
No. You can reasonably take an action against someone that is the same degree of involvement they attempt to do to you. By someone stabbing you, or attempting to, they consent to the same degree of violence against them, by having taken direct action against you.
This is not the same as, for example, someone fleeing from attackers, and knocking on your door, thus potentially drawing the attention of the attackers to you. Of course, you’re free to deny the attackers or the victim entry.
So I can legally/morally stab someone who tried to stab me? How is that at all helpful? I don’t want to stab anyone.
How would this translate to the measles situation? If someone gives me measles, then I’m allowed to give them back measles? But they already have measles. That’s how they were able to transmit it. And I’ll still have gotten the disease. I want to maintain my health and not get infected in the first place.
Then don’t stab anyone, and prepare for what situations you run into where you know it’s possible to be stabbed, but won’t stab in return.
Yes. You can get measles from someone, and can give it to them. The fundamental bad actor is the disease itself, and we address that by getting immunity to it, one way or the other.
Get a vaccine. Nobody should every be able to take that right from you.
Are you an anti-vaxxer?
I’m absolutely for the rights of people to either have or refuse vaccines. Of course, in your mind, that probably just equates to being an anti-vaxxer. I get vaccines when it makes sense to me to do so, which doesn’t include all vaccines.
Yeah, honestly you are an anti-vaxxer if your personal feelings (or crackpot theories) negatively affect your perception of vaccine science even slightly. What you’re expressing here is an idea that has killed countless people and it will only get worse. Everyone should thank you for bringing back measles though, because your valiant freedom fighting “helped” us in that way.
Crackpot theories… …like… … how evolution works? …or how regressive evolution works?
Diseases have killed countless people, and we have multiple vectors (and should have multiple vectors) for addressing them.
We have technology, as in vaccines. This is a good thing.
We have social behaviors including social pressure (which is, unfortunately, often compulsive and not well-aimed by the people that exercise it, but such is life).
We have individual immunity, and the direct biological pressure for health and general genetic robustness, which is also a good thing, even though it kills some of us.
the cool thing is, we’re now at a point where there are lots of anti-vaxxers who are totally willing to throw their lives away for the benefit of the species. …and, their surviving genetic lines and the rest of the species, as their children interbreed with the rest of humanity, will be better off for it. That’s true, whether you like it or not. It’s also true that forcing vaccination rather than simply providing and incentivizing vaccination is a terribly, terribly flawed strategy which causes far more issues than it fixes.
I understand that you’re making social-pressure arguments, and that they are valid in the context you’re in. But they aren’t the end-all be-all, and they’re not fundamentally scientific (or even logical) just because you’re trying to support science by using them.
I also know this whole conversation brings up tons of uncomfortable topics, for which I’ll probably get yelled at. I just don’t care, because being more forceful about an argument, or getting the last word, really has no bearing on the truth of that word.
To partake in society you have to accept societal contracts. One such contract is to not be a dick to others. If you don’t vaccinate yourself against certain things, you are liable for spreading the disease. And thus you are being a dick. And thus you break the contract.
If you excuse yourself from society going forward though, I see no problem with your stance.
I reject societal contracts that do not support individual and body sovereignty. Of course, you can do with that as you will, because… …well… …sovereignty. Just know that if you take body sovereignty from people in one area, you empower the government to make decisions about your body, as well.
…and as we all have seen, the benevolence of the government is largely dependent on what party is in power, and what societal dynamics are in play. it’s… …unreliable, at best.
I literally called it, the day Democrats started pushing forced vaccinations, that the Republicans would go for reversal of abortion law. …and they fucking did, and they fucking succeeded in many ways, and that is direct consequence of permitting the government to violate body sovereignty, even when the voiced arguments do not pertain to it.
So, you can have your contiguous society, with forced social contracts rather than ones people actually are willing to agree to. …and you’ll also have the consequences, whether or not you can cognize how bad that will be right now.
If there is no disease there is no contagious.
No, they should just not be allowed to prevent their children from being vaccinated.
I don’t believe people should be forced to do it, I think that they should be held liable tho.
I think there are a few issues:
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How do you prove kid A gave kid B measels?
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Why isn’t kid B vaccinated? Because they don’t need to be, group immunity. Well that is no longer true with anti vax so…
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Kid B then gives kid C measels, so kid B’s parents are now liable.
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Your in small claims court. You have to prove damages. So you’re going for loss of earning for an adult looking after the kid + pain and suffering. Is that payout going to be worth filing papers, legal advice etc.
You’d be better passing a law to mandate vaccines, but that won’t be politically viable.
Just my thoughts - am not Canadian.
pain and suffering.
Minus this, that’s not a thing in Canada. You could seek future earnings if the child died but that’s hard to prove when they don’t even have a GED and it’s unlikely when the child is dead. (Also would take it out of small claims)
Same here. Your pain and suffering is like $40.
Crazy when you see US damages being in the millions.
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It opens some weird ideas to the game. If you are unvaccinated, yet previously had the illness and recovered, do you need a vaccine. What if you’ve been vaccinated and still spread it. What if you can’t have the vaccines because if of health conditions. Anger does not fix the problem. We need a compromise, not a rule.
Kids shouldn’t be getting measles in the first place. No measles, no problems you described. No anger here.
Bacteria and viruses spread. It’s what they do. We need a way to adapt to them. Vaccines are good, being healthy probably helps more. What we need is real food, housing and health care and education. Instead we have arguments about vaccines. Sad really.
I mean, from a simple enforcement perspective “prove that you’re vaxxed” runs into the same problem as “prove that you’re a legal resident”.
Access to health care, access to documentation of that health care, and the ability to produce it on demand all require certain amenities that marginalized people don’t have. It’s a rule that inevitably penalizes people for being poor.
Shy of getting people chipped and slotting your medical records into the same system that we use for criminal enforcement, the folks enforcing the laws will default to the assumption that you’re at fault until you can prove otherwise.
