"It's the best script ever because I get to shoot first this time!" -HF

Stop being ridiculous; they aren't "endangering" anyone. They simply aren't using the medical tools available to reduce the risk of a threat that already exists completely independent of them and their kids. That threat comes from nature. The default state of all people is unvaccinated. They aren't increasing that threat by not getting vaccinated. You're being absurd.

Your irrational fear of the natural world does not entitle you to strap other peoples' children to gurneys and jam needles in their arms.

Of course there is. Once you go down the road of the state reviewing legitimate health and medical decisions made by parents, you're opening the door to all manner of things that busy-bodies like the GP would like to have enforced by the state upon all the other parents. Which is fine with the GP, right up until someone else decides that the GP isn't doing the right thing and comes down on them. Then, suddenly, they'll turn around and play victim, as if they had nothing to do with laying the groundwork for the mess they'll invariably find themselves in.

Astronomer A: "Do you see anything in the telescope eyepiece?"

Astronomer B: "Nope. Nothing."

Astronomer A: "Yaaay! That means WE discovered Dark Matter!"

Astronomer B: "So, do we get a Nobel?"

Astronomer A: "It already came. Didn't you see it?"

Astronomer B: "Nope."

Astronomer A: "That's because it arrived in a Dark Box."

Doesn't this cause Comcast to forfeit 'Common Carrier' status under laws like the DMCA? My understanding was that ISPs basically said "we can't be held liable for copyright infringement because we can't monitor everything going across our wires for violations" and the government agreed that it all made sense. If Comcast now actually can monitor all the content rolling across its wires without any apparent undue burden, can't every copyright owner then sue Comcast for infringement if it isn't actively removing unlawfully distributed copyrighted works from its wires?

In other words, can't I copyright a 10 second video of myself slamming my head against a wall, then upload it to Bit Torrent with a clearly written copyright notice stating that one must send me a check for $50 Billion to view the clip, then sue Comcast into oblivion when someone on their network actually downloads it?

Let's play the prosecutors' game!

8) Destruction of evidence
9) Obstruction of justice
10) Witness tampering
11) Deprivation of rights under color of law
12) Criminal conspiracy
13) Possession of a firearm during commission of a crime

Should be able to get about 40+ years worth of charges in play, then plea bargain it down to 5 years in prison for each officer involved. Between that and the 7 mill in cash in compensation for the victim, I'd say that makes everyone square.

I could not agree more. Subject the police to the same laws as everyone else when not in the performance of their duties (and hold them to strict scrutiny while in performance) and when some of these guys start going to prison, the rest will pay a whole lot more attention to the line between lawful and unlawful.

And sometimes the best of hammers will mangle a perfectly good nail. Yes, the tools we have are imperfect; no one is disputing that.

Whoa whoa whoa, stop right there. The default state of a human body is unvaccinated. No one is removing a vaccine from themselves. No one is removing antibodies from themselves in an effort to make themselves or others more susceptible to disease. The default state is unvaccinated. It isn't about "if too many people decide not to", it's "if enough people decide to do it... positive things can happen". And yes, there's a huge difference. See the previous post.

I completely understand that. However, you need to understand that disease is part of the human existence. Don't want to deal with disease? Stop being alive; that fixes the problem. Otherwise, accept the existence of risk and understand that your desire to minimize your risk and the risk of your loved ones does not entitle you or the government to strap a child to a gurney, jam needles in their arm, and pump them full of drugs (albeit very good and beneficial drugs).

Vaccines are a wonderful tool of modern medicine. The fact that that tool's effectiveness increases when more people make use of it does not entitle you or anyone else to force others to make use of that tool. You are not entitled to a risk-free or even a risk-reduced existence. The default state of a human being is naked, defenseless, and susceptible to all manner of diseases and predators. The fact that you're now safer than any other human being in the history of the planet ought to be enough. You have no right to perfect safety and you have no right to force others to help you get closer to perfect safety.

No, you appear to think that everyone else is doing as well as you are. There are plenty of families barely putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads with two incomes. There are plenty of single mothers and fathers who aren't even doing that well. Homeschooling is not an option for them. It simply isn't.

Yes, I am. You seem to be advocating that people who make different decisions than you or I might should be punished by the state. That's not just unreasonable, that's tyrannical. These people have every right to be idiots and if you don't want their kids in school with your kids, free up the tax money so they can send them somewhere else. STOP TRYING TO CONTROL EVERYONE ELSE'S LIFE AND START JUST LIVING YOUR OWN!

That's not only absurd, but requires the kind of despotic tyranny many would fight with force of arms. Let's take it in another direction so maybe you'll see just how ridiculous it is. How about a law requiring everyone to be armed with a loaded M-16 in public? After all, there are all kinds of threats in the natural world that can be significantly reduced when lots of people have M-16s. Therefore, everyone must always have an M-16, fully loaded and ready to fire, while out in public so the public can be protected from physical threats.

It's also stupidly backwards. People who are not vaccinated are not some kind of super-threat we need to be protected from. They're simply not using the tools of modern medicine to reduce a threat which already exists and has for millions of years. And those threats are quite few among the natural world. If 0% of the population is vaccinated against a disease, then the threat is at the NORMAL level found in NATURE. As more people get vaccinated, that threat is reduced. Does that fact make it right to strap unwilling citizens (children, no less!) to a gurney and jam a needle full of drugs into their arms so they can be injected against their will? No, it does not. To say otherwise is to invite all kinds of other dictatorial bullshit and eventually it'll be the kind of dictatorial bullshit you won't like.

Of course, you won't be able to do anything about it by then.

The simple fix is to do what some countries in Europe already do: have the tax money used for schooling children attached to the individual child. As such, whichever school the parent chooses as best for their child gets the tax money allocated for that child. Schools then compete with one another to get students (and the money that comes with them). Not only does everyone end up with a better education (no monopoly produces better results and that holds true for education as well), but you'll also end up with a small subset of schools allowing unvaccinated kids to attend. That results in no additional cost to the idiot parents who aren't vaccinating their kids and everyone else can take advantage of herd immunity. And perhaps when the first few waves of preventable disease decimate the population at those schools allowing unvaccinated children, some people will take the hint and start using the tools of modern medicine to reduce the natural threats of our world.

Then I guess their kid just has to take their chances with the natural world like everyone other human has for millions of years.

I think it's a stupid decision to not vaccinate your kids (when that's possible which is nearly always), but vaccines are tools of modern medicine used to reduce a threat that already exists because of the fact that we live in a natural world. The moment a person makes the decision to bring a child into this world, they accept all the risks that come with that, and disease is merely a small part of the risk. More people getting vaccinated results in lowering the risk for one of a hundred million different ways to die. If some choose not to do that, so what? They're idiots and it's unfortunate. Would it be beneficial to the kid who can't get vaccinated if more people did? Yes. Does that give them the right to jam a needle full of drugs into someone else's arm and and inject them? No.