Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 134 posts

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#51

Post by ossreality »

chrisau wrote: post #42

One thing confuses me. Why are parents of vaccinated kids so terrified of unvaccinated kids?? Does vaccination work or not? If my kids are vaccinated, doesn't that mean they won't catch the disease if they encounter it? Or, at the worst, get a mild dose. If vaccination works, why do we care that a small minority aren't vaccinated?

God, this is just like "If gay people don't have kids how are there gay people?"

Do people that ask this really think they're a secret genius? Do they not know how to Google? The article even links out to "herd immunity".

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#52

Post by ossreality »

pzxc wrote: post #11

Some people view their right to not vaccinate, not circumcise, have a home birth of their son and then home-school him, to be an essential religious freedom protected by the first amendment, no different than their right to be a conscientious objector of military conscription. This is a far more complex issue than it appears. Don't dismiss it derisively, as if only an idiot could disagree with you. (Not speaking to a…

Wait, "not circumsizing" is the norm. Did you mean the other way? Ugh.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#53

Post by jawngee »

smuss77 wrote: post #27

If it was my son and he couldn't be vaccinated for a few months I'd simply hold him out of school until the vaccinations could be administered. I feel for the child and his family, it's a horrible thing that happened to them, but talk about solving a simple problem with an activist response. This is how we end up with a ridiculous number of laws and regulations. If we should legislate that every kid in a public schoo…

Because going to school is a legal requirement until a specific age. Going to the library or another public place is not.

People shouldn't be afforded leeway because of their own ignorance. Not vaccinating your child is ignorant and dangerous. I don't think there should be a religious exemption either, but I'm a raging atheist so shrug.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#54

Post by symkat »

bradleyjg wrote: post #31
symkat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like New York's current law is the same as California. From the article you linked: The state law provides two exemptions from the mandate, ... the second for "children whose parent, parents, or guardian hold genuine and sincere religious beliefs which are contrary to the practices herein required. The NPR article seems to discuss a father specifically attacking the personal belief exemption in Califor…

New York only always exemptions for sincere religious beliefs, California allows exemptions for any beliefs. Before the obvious objection, there are plenty of examples of people who try to create a special purpose religion to get around some or other rule, and only a few cases where it has actually worked. Also as the top level poster alludes to the second circuit recently ruled that the religious exemption is not co…

Thank you, this decision was a great read, and I now have a better understanding how the school and legal systems in New York will challenge religious exemption to a level California seemingly does not.

I think I found the judicial vernacular of "lol, no":

  Plaintiffs finally seek succor in the Ninth Amendment. 
  But, we have held, “[t]he Ninth Amendment is not an
  independent source of individual rights.” 
  Because plaintiffs fail plausibly to allege a violation 
  of any other constitutional right, their effort to 
  recast their unsuccessful claims as a violation of the 
  Ninth Amendment also fails.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#55

Post by pzxc »

bequanna wrote: post #18
pzxc wrote: post #11

Some people view their right to not vaccinate, not circumcise, have a home birth of their son and then home-school him, to be an essential religious freedom protected by the first amendment, no different than their right to be a conscientious objector of military conscription. This is a far more complex issue than it appears. Don't dismiss it derisively, as if only an idiot could disagree with you. (Not speaking to a…

Ok, but I think you're missing the point here. It would be OK if you were to refuse vaccinations and only you had to bear the costs of that decision: You get sick, you die, the end. That is not the case here. There are, potentially, huge external costs to your decision. You may get sick and infect others with poor immune systems. Other people might die. I think a good comparison here would be parents who expose their…

But how do you quantify it? How much harm is caused to herd immunity by 1 more child not getting vaccinated? What is the expected value of that -- the probability that the disease for which the vaccine is available actually occurs in such a way that the voluntarily-nonvaccinated person contracts it and then passes it on to someone who is involuntarily nonvaccinated?

How does the expected value of that harm (probability assessment) compare to the expected value of harm from secondhand smoke? What about the harm from wood fireplaces? What about swimming pools and trampoline and the probability of injury or death from both?

All I'm saying is, some of the commenters in this thread are (in my opinion) being just as irrational and hyperbolic as the anti-vaccine crowd. (Especially the people replying to me playing devil's advocate). For example the one comparing it to drunk driving. And it's a shame.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#56

Post by PeterisP »

haiguy wrote: post #19

Do any of you religiously stay up to date on your boosters to stay fully immune to these diseases? Do you advocate shutting down the borders, prosecuting people to the fullest extent of the law that are found illegally in this country, and overall taking every effort to prevent illegal immigrants into the country where we can't control their movements amongst the population and have no history of their medical condit…

The very real concept of herd immunity means that a small percentage of the population can be vulnerable, but the "herd" is still immune because when the disease is introduced, then doesn't get enough chances to spread and dies out with minimal impact.

All the reasons you list usually account for something like 1-2% of population, and this is enough to have everyone be safe from measles and such. However, in the OP case, "His son attends Reed Elementary in Tiburon, a school with a 7 percent personal belief exemption rate" and that seems to be representative for that part of California. The gap - some 5% of kids - is the result of deliberate, intentional decisions that can be changed.

If most of those intentionally unvaccinated kids would get vaccinated, we could have effective herd immunity for all the kids even if people don't "religiously stay up to date on your boosters" and the borders aren't shut down. Attempting to do the impossible (zero chance of measles brought across border) is not productive, but attempting to vaccinate kids is possible to protect those who can't be vaccinated, such as the kids on cancer chemotherapy or immunosuppresants after organ transplants.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#57

Post by toomuchtodo »

chrisau wrote: post #42

One thing confuses me. Why are parents of vaccinated kids so terrified of unvaccinated kids?? Does vaccination work or not? If my kids are vaccinated, doesn't that mean they won't catch the disease if they encounter it? Or, at the worst, get a mild dose. If vaccination works, why do we care that a small minority aren't vaccinated?

> If vaccination works, why do we care that a small minority aren't vaccinated?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

By choosing not to be vaccinated, you put those at risk who cannot receive a vaccination for legitimate reasons.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#58

Post by threatofrain »

jawngee wrote: post #53
smuss77 wrote: post #27

If it was my son and he couldn't be vaccinated for a few months I'd simply hold him out of school until the vaccinations could be administered. I feel for the child and his family, it's a horrible thing that happened to them, but talk about solving a simple problem with an activist response. This is how we end up with a ridiculous number of laws and regulations. If we should legislate that every kid in a public schoo…

Because going to school is a legal requirement until a specific age. Going to the library or another public place is not. People shouldn't be afforded leeway because of their own ignorance. Not vaccinating your child is ignorant and dangerous. I don't think there should be a religious exemption either, but I'm a raging atheist so shrug .

Yeah but that's kind of a capricious line considering the amount of traffic going into that public place -- mandatory of not. It's kind of a not-so-strong point to say that kids are forced to go to school when there are so many kids in a library anyway.

Also, I thought vaccination works? If so, what does it matter if another child is or isn't vaccinated? This child is a special case, and he is also a temporary case. It's because HE cannot be vaccinated. It's silly because if there were another special case at the school, then it would be untenable.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#59

Post by dinkumthinkum »

chrisau wrote: post #42

One thing confuses me. Why are parents of vaccinated kids so terrified of unvaccinated kids?? Does vaccination work or not? If my kids are vaccinated, doesn't that mean they won't catch the disease if they encounter it? Or, at the worst, get a mild dose. If vaccination works, why do we care that a small minority aren't vaccinated?

I don't mean this in a mean way. However, I don't think you understand the science here at even an elementary level. It is this sort of attitude that only serves to bolster the position of those essentially against science. It's not about encountering a "mild dose."

Here is a link to a simple explanation.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/08/27/mixing-unvaccin...

From the linke:

"Here’s the simple answer: Vaccines are not 100% effective. Nothing in medicine is. They may be 99% effective, 95% effective, 90% effective, or even less. By medical standards, any intervention that’s over 90% effective is a pretty darned good intervention, and most vaccines are at least pretty darned good, especially given how rare serious reactions are. But they are not 100% effective, and it is almost as foolish for parents who vaccinate their children to believe that vaccines will be 100% effective in protecting their children as it is for antivaccinationists to believe that vaccines do more harm than good. At the very least, it’s naive. Also, there are children who for health reasons cannot be vaccinated and who thus rely on herd immunity. The larger the population of unvaccinated children, the weaker the herd immunity, and if the percentage of vaccinated children falls below a certain point herd immunity basically collapses."

The science here is so clear. A key point is that children that, in rare cases, cannot be vaccinated for other health reasons can not longer rely on herd immunity because such as what you are advocating for have taken up the madness pitchforks along with Jenny McCarthy to destroy herd immunity.

Re: To Protect His Son, a Father Asks School to Bar Unvaccinated Children

#60

Post by PeterisP »

chrisau wrote: post #42

One thing confuses me. Why are parents of vaccinated kids so terrified of unvaccinated kids?? Does vaccination work or not? If my kids are vaccinated, doesn't that mean they won't catch the disease if they encounter it? Or, at the worst, get a mild dose. If vaccination works, why do we care that a small minority aren't vaccinated?

There are kids that cannot be vaccinated for various medical reasons.

If unvaccinated kids are rare, then they're safe because any disease outbreaks quickly stop and don't spread; but if the rate of unvaccinated kids is above a certain threshold then they are at a serious risk.

Post reply on HN