Anti-vaxxers may be required to go to school
 

Some Canadian parents who object to vaccines could be forced to take class on immunization science

I'm a bit ambivalent. Of course there's the schadenfreude. But it certainly wouldn't affect the rabid ones at all.

And for some reason I see somewhat of a parallel with forcing women who want abortions to attend training, often anti-abortion.

Hey I have a better idea. Just infect their kids with something they refuse to vaccinate for. That'll demonstrate the point.

You aren't thinking of the children.

It'll be good experience for them.

On that basis, me teaching them how to drive, how to have sex, how to drink alcohol and how to sail would also be good experiences for them. My knees are killing me but I'm ready to overcome that to help these poor kids. Plus I could use the money. Time and expenses plus 20%, portal to portal. Hold harmless agreements must be enacted.

You could get into serious trouble for teaching children how to have sex.

pervert alert

With me teaching them how to drive, drink, drug, sail, shoot, science, cheat on their taxes, etc, that will be the least of anybody's worries.

By the way, abstinence is one way to have sex and it's highly approved of by a lot of very strict people.

Abstinence is a way to have sex in the same way that dehydration is a way to stay hydrated.

Got to remember lots of those advocating abstinence don't consider oral or anal intercourse as sex. Unless it's with a member of ones own gender and you want to get married. Then it's the worst sex possible.

I have mixed feelings about it, but I don't see it in the same category as forcing women to take anti-abortion counselling.

Maybe a little more on the slope of forcing people educate their children, which few people see as a problem.

The thing about anti-vaxxers is that they personally will not suffer any consequences from not vaccinating. Their children and other people's children very well may.

Societies dictate what social realities are, often without reason or evidence. Tradition and culture tends to fixate what people should regard as reasonable.
If anti-vaxxers need educating then so should those who attend cathedrals, temples mosques, and synagogues.

Society trains minds in illogic. Should we then be surprised when they express themselves illogically or commit illogical acts? Their position is no less logical or evidence-free than any god-botherer.

Society has no right to dictate belief, it does have a right to insist no matter what people believe, they have a duty of care to others. So the ACT, even if motivated by belief, becomes the point where society intervenes.
In any event such intervention will be hypocritical, because of the subjective way that different species of woo are treated.

More consistency is obviously required. Anti-vaccination woo is a by-product of science denial, but any evidence-free, reason-free belief is a denial of science. Or worse, woolly dualism.

We tolerate folks who claim that prayer cured their loved one of cancer. We let the plagiarize for god, but it is the smart physicians, backed by scientific knowledge, that tunes anti-cancer therapies towards success.
In any case, it is time we stopped making scapegoats of anti-vaxxers, or for that matter, even radical terrorists for the systemic failures in society for which we all share in the blame.

Not even just children, yall, adults with compromised immune systems, cancer patients, HIV patients, really old folks, alla them, they cant risk bein around un-vaxxed kids/families, 'cause they cant get vaccines themselves, and they rely on the rest of us to get our shots so's they benefit from community immunity. (Sounds better than "herd immunity," I reckon.)

I done quit hangin out with a certain circle of wooist ladyfriends who aint vaxxed their kids, 'cause I got a good buddy with HIV, and we can't risk him gettin sick. I dont wanna carry the chicken pox or measles to my buddy's house when I see him, which is about twice a month, yall.

Not vaccinatin... so selfish, so stupid... them idiots do deserve a class.

One difference is that not vaccinating your child affects other people - both the child and people outside the family. Also abortion has embedded within it many subjective issues, like at what point the abortion should be allowed to occur, when the fetus feels pain, what is the limit of viability and when you can regard it as a human. I have no idea what the training involves, but I bet it is around a lot of these subjective issues, rather than the plain facts.

community immunity would fit well in hip hop.

NSFW:

Abortion should be allowed up to the age of 30, at the mother's discretion.

I did have friend (in Canada) who didn't get her children vaccinated because she didn't think the evidence was good enough. Eventually a doctor explained why it was a good thing, and she got them vaccinated. She said "I just wanted to have someone actually explain it".

I do think that sometimes, in their zeal to promote a good thing, health-promotion bodies tend to shoot themselves in the foot by underplaying the real downsides. People like facts, not bullshit, and in any successful vaccination program with a low-risk vaccine, there will come a time when the risk from the vaccine is greater than the risk from the disease it's vaccinating against. At which point, vaccinating your child is for the good of the whole community (including your child) not for your child individually. For your child individually it's better not to be vaccinated - as long as it's only you and a few others.

I felt the same about breast-feeding. There are some downsides of breast-feeding - hugely outweighed by the upsides. But people suppress the downsides, so when you come across them (mastitis, let-down pains, breast-milk jaundice, need for more feeds during the night, wet patches on your front, having to feed your baby in a public toilet because stupid people don't want to risk seeing a brief flash of nipple etc) you think you are the only one for whom it doesn't work.

People can make sensible choices if they are given good data. But if they mistrust the data, then they can, with some reasonableness, make poor choices.

This is treacherous territory for people congenitally challenged with all/some/none problems.

It's why, in my generation, EVERYONE was vaccinated against smallpox, and now very few of us are (I get boosters because I sometimes work with vaccinia). It's also why in the US (probably Europe too... I'll have to look it up) we switched back from the Sabin vaccine to the Salk vaccine. (I think I've explained that before; but I'll go through it again if anyone is puzzled.)

Well (at Pingu) that's a good reason to craft a careful, honest information course for parents regarding vaccines, including the downsides (besides the rare bad effect, there's also the fact some vaccines don't seem to work very well for some individuals, iirc) and the overwhelming benefits.

Oh please do!

Yes indeed. I even thought of writing a booklet at one time about the downsides of breastfeeding! Just to encourage people who thought they were the only ones not finding it trouble free and uplifting and "natural".

Because once you get through the early stages, it is, pretty well! Apart from the emergence of teeth....

To be fair, I believe the lactation enthusiasts have toned down their rhetoric a lot. At least here young women seem to be encouraged to breastfeed but also helped with problems and not frowned on if they can't deal with something and have to give up.

Another pernicious (IMO) meme was the idea that ONE bottle of formula negated the whole thing. I was not well immediately after the birth and couldn't feed, so the nurses gave my son a formula bottle. Some of my La Leche League friends were horrified.

So silly.

Apologies for breast-feeding derail, but they aren't entirely irrelevant to each other. La Leche enthusiasts in my experience are also often anti-vaxxers.