Comment: Re:Autism Schmautism (Score 1) 720
So, in your view, Typhoid Mary should have been allowed to continue working as a cook and making people sick because working was her right and who cares if she gets anyone sick/kills anyone? This is essentially what you are advocating.
No, it isn't. There's a difference between someone who's potentially more vulnerable to a disease because their immune system hasn't been trained to recognize it and someone who's a known, active carrier of a specific disease who is knowingly infecting other people. So no, that isn't at all what I am advocating.
In fact, you are essentially committing your own "self-infecting with Bubonic Plague then strolling through an airport coughing on people" example. By not vaccinating, you are making yourself a potential infection vector.
If you can't see the difference between "I refuse to utilize man-made means to boost my immune system" and "I'm going to purposely infect myself with this weaponized biological agent so I can infect others", then there just isn't any hope for you as you lack basic logic and critical thinking skills necessary for the comprehension of this discussion. If you actually believe what you're saying here - and you're not just doing it for effect because you want to make your case or make a point - then let's just stop right now because there's no rationalizing with an irrational person. If you're just trying to make your point, then you should do so in a way which makes sense as it'll carry more weight.
You are reducing herd immunity and making people get sick and die.
Reducing herd immunity? Not measurably. "Making people get sick and die"? That's patently absurd. No one is making anyone get sick and die. You wouldn't say that an AIDS patient who cannot tolerate vaccinations against diseases is "making people get sick and die", would you? They're compromising herd immunity exactly as much as someone who merely chooses not to get vaccinated. The effect is the same: one less person out of the whole of the "herd" has a potentially better prepared immune system. And in any event, unless the particular individual is actively infected, contagious, and is knowingly interacting with the public under those conditions, there's no case to be made that they're making anyone sick. A healthy person unvaccinated against Influenza who is not infected with Influenza or who is not interacting with other people while they have and are contagious with Influenza is not making ANYONE sick. Get real.
This isn't just hypothetical.
No, it really is. We're talking about a hypothetical person refusing a hypothetical vaccine which may or may not provide any immune system boost for said hypothetical person against said hypothetical disease. That's hypothetical. Even if you reference a specific, real person, a vaccine will only provide a chance of improved immune system response to specific strains of a specific type of pathogen. There's no magic shield that envelopes a vaccinated individual; they simply have a better chance of their immune system being able to quickly respond to and destroy that pathogen upon infection. If their immune system doesn't respond as expected, or if that response is later counteracted by some other factor, or even the slightest of genetic mutations takes place in the pathogen, there's little help from the vaccine. Doesn't mean vaccines are anything less than a godsend for humanity in the fight against pandemics, but there's no guarantee of any level of actual protection or contribution to herd immunity at an individual level. To claim there is is purely speculative and, as previously stated, entirely hypothetical.
There are outbreaks of diseases that were all but wiped out in the United States and other countries because groups of people (who didn't grow up with them - thanks to vaccines - and thus don't know about the horrors of those diseases) are allowing themselves to be infected becoming infected.
I fixed your grossly inaccurate statement for you. An individual who refuses vaccination and subsequently becomes infected with a pathogen is not "allowing themselves to be infected". They didn't ask for the infection; that's just victim-blaming bullshit. "Did you see the way she was dressed refusing vaccinations? She was askin' for it!" Stop it. Just stop it.
And? People die every day. Life is a terminal condition. No one - so far as medical science is concerned - has ever escaped life without eventually dying. People are born, they live, and they die. That's the natural world. Some of them die by animal attacks, some by human attacks, some by accidents, some by gross negligence or stupidity, some because of genetic malfunction, and many because of disease. People die; get over it.
If you refuse vaccination, you aren't just making a decision about your own body, but are making a decision about dozens of other people whom you will come into contact with.
Oh just stop it. You aren't making any decisions about dozens of other people. Those people have to make their own medical decisions. If you don't want to risk being around anyone who hasn't been vaccinated (either by choice, medical necessity, or for any other reason), ask every single person you come into contact with whether they've had their shots and demand documentation. If anyone fails to provide that, leave. Or, if that seems absurd to you (and by God I hope it does), you could simply make smart choices for your own health, do the best you can, and roll the dice. Every time you get out of bed, you're rolling the dice. You don't get to dictate how everyone else lives their lives simply because you want to skew that dice roll in your favor in some futile attempt to postpone your inevitable death.
You are deciding that people will get sick or die because of some misplaced fear of "toxins" and bad risk assessment.
Deciding against getting vaccinated is not deciding that people will get sick and die. The process of not getting vaccinated does not involve deliberately infecting other people with pathogens. In fact, all it involves is not engaging in a man-made medical practice; allowing nature to take its course. There's nothing - NOTHING - about refusing vaccinations which causes another person to become sick. There isn't some vaccine fairy living in the clouds that shoots someone with the Measles arrow every time someone makes the decision not to get vaccinated. And even if this magic cloud Measles fairy did exist, it STILL isn't the fault of the person refusing the vaccination that the magic cloud fairy infected another person; it's the fairy's fault.
I'm not trying to argue that it's a good idea to avoid vaccinations; I think it's a bad idea. I think it's a fantastic example of how bad most people are at risk assessment in their daily lives and every reason I've heard for why people refuse vaccines has struck me as being based in ignorance and/or absurdities. What I am arguing is that they have every right to make poor decisions about what they do or don't put into their own bodies. By that token, I would argue that if someone wants to drink themselves into a stupor every night, or smoke a joint, or shoot Heroin five nights a week, they should have at it. Destroy your body and your brain if you choose. Two conditions: 1, you're still responsible for anything you do while under the influence of these things. And 2, no public monies supporting your terrible decisions.
People have the right to make what you and I might judge to be poor decisions so long as those decisions do not directly impact the rights of other people. Now you might make a reasonable argument that there's an indirect rise in risk factors for other people because of the decision not to vaccinate, but that isn't violating anyone's rights.
You have no right to protection against the natural world and you certainly have no right to force others to assist you in trying to protect yourself against the natural world.