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?
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.
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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:
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:
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:
It works, generally speaking, over the long term, and often enough in the short term
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
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:
edit: btw, thanks for the genuine civil discourse, I enjoy it.
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.
And what might those preparations look like? How does one prepare for that, as well as for the possibility of getting shot, or being run over by a car while on the sidewalk, or getting mugged/pickpocketted, or getting your credit card information stolen, or having your home being broken into and ransacked, or someone picking up your infant and running away with them, or having your drink/food spiked, etc.
A vaccine is never 100% effective. If it were, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place. 3% of people receiving the measles vaccine don’t get immunity, and there’s those who can’t get the vaccine because they’re too young, or are immunocompromised in some way. What option would they have for dealing with their own lives without controlling others?
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.