I beg to differ. It's way too lenient to only restrict their children to access public spaces. No, they should be tried for the attempted premediated murder of every child their children meets or simply put, a crime against humanity. Biological warfare is a war crime, you know. Hand out a few thousand year sentences, watch anti vaxx sentiment disappear.

Shouldn’t the same argument be used to persecute pro-choice advocates, women who get abortions and doctors who perform them?

This issue is much simpler if you rephrase it: replace the "pro life" label with "anti woman". As long as the child is connected to the body of the mother, we as a society decided it's more important to give mothers bodily agency than any rights of a potential human. Do not get tangled in the definition of when life begins, this issue is not biological, it's very strictly a decision the society needs to make. And while you think the decision is not clear cut, it actually is, you just need to look elsewhere where soceties made a decision on bodily agency: organ donors after death. I never heard of any place where it is mandatory to be an organ donor -- actually most places are opt in. So, apparently even your cadaver deserves bodily agency. If we consider the agency of a dead body can be more important than the life of several adult humans then how on earth can the agency of a living body be less important than someone who is not even born yet (might not survive etc)? Hypocrisy much?

Sure, and you could similarly replace "pro-vaxx" with "anti-freedom". Then it becomes a bit harder to stomach, no?

The point is, women are free to abort unborn children. They're not free to let their (born) children die (of neglect). It's not an obvious choice whether they should be free to not vaccinate their children or not.

> It's not an obvious choice whether they should be free to not vaccinate their children or not.

I mean, it really is. Not vaccinate can lead to death, not always but it massively increases the risk to the point that I consider it neglect. Just as a child left on the street may survive, it doesn't stop the path that put that child on the street being termed "neglect".

(I am pro-choice and pro-vaccine)

How can you be for bodily agency and also be in favor of forcing people to get vaccines?

Note first I disagree with allowing to opt out of your body used as an organ donor after your death.

No value is absolute. Trolley problem and all that (Judith Jarvis Thomson phrased the trolley problem as an organ transplant case it so happens). The potential destruction wrought by an unvaccinated child is deadly enough it overrides the individual bodily agency. By taking away the bodily agency of one child you are potentially saving several living, actual humans. When you take away the bodily agency of one woman, you are potentially saving the life of an unborn person at best. This doesn't compare favorably. Also, beyond bodily agency we need to weigh all effects of forcing a decision and forcing vaccinations have an extremely low chance of causing harm to the child being vaccinated whereas banning abortions have an extremely high chance of causing harm to the woman.

The chance of a child dying from a vaccine preventable disease in the United States is far lower than from a car accident. It would be absurd to suggest we charge vehicle drivers with attempted premeditated murder because there’s a risk they might kill people on the roads they’re driving on.

(Yes, I’m aware this is due to herd immunity. I’m not talking about hypothetical situations where the majority of people do not voluntarily get vaccinated)

Isn't this already a thing? Per below links, I thought most schools require vaccinations. It seems to be a minority of states that allow 'philosophical' exemptions.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/laws/state-reqs.ht...

https://vaccines.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003...

Obviously, restricting access to all public spaces goes much further...but functionally, this works well enough if we just get rid of the states with philosophical exemptions.

That may be one of the specific circumstances I'd be ok with, just because children are in such close contact with each other.

> It seems to be a minority of states that allow 'philosophical' exemptions.

Antivaxx is basically a religion, isn't it? ;)

Do you believe it's a bad idea for governments to mandate that you're up to date on your vaccinations before entering their country? Should you be allowed to lie about your vaccination history because you believe it's unfair for them to force that upon you?

Is it your right to potentially threaten their population by bringing in dangerous diseases? Or does this only apply to your current government?

I have a choice to travel to other countries or not. I don't really have a choice to not live in (or not pay taxes to) the country I was born into.

No, but you do live with other people. As part of that, we all sign the social contract when we're born which stipulates how we can and cannot behave around other people.

As part of that, people that disregard vaccination are putting the lives of those around them in very real danger. Which is exactly why people believe anti-vaxxers are a problem, and why there's an increasing push to deny them the public sphere.

> people that disregard vaccination are putting the lives of those around them in very real danger.

So do people that drive...

> putting the lives of those around them in very real danger

If thousands of people were dying of vaccine-preventable diseases I may reconsider my stance, but we are currently nowhere close to justifying crossing that line.

IMHO it's a self-correcting problem. If more people do start dying of these diseases some of the holdouts will get the vaccines.

As has been mentioned in this thread before it's not a 'self-correcting problem', because the people that legitimately cannot get vaccines or suffer from other issues compromising their immune system are affected as well. And as seen with issue issues relating to conspiracy theories...they tend to just deny the outbreaks as being government-orchestrated, or say that getting the disease is actually good for you.

Anti-vaxxers threaten the lives of innocent people and acting otherwise is incredibly callous and ignorant.

How many immune system compromised individuals die of vaccine-preventable diseases in the United States each year?

Like I said, if it's thousands I might reconsider my stance. If not, sorry, but it doesn't justify the government forcing people to do things to their body.

Okay, real question: Are you being serious here?

There's a huge logical problem with your argument. The reason why so few immune-compromised individuals die of vaccine-preventable diseases is because they're protected by herd immunity due to people being vaccinated.

When the vaccination rate goes down, you see more people die from vaccine preventable diseases. Because that's what vaccines do: they prevent people from dying from vaccine-preventable diseases. Which, often, is children.

> When the vaccination rate goes down, you see more people die from vaccine preventable diseases.

To see this all we have to do is simply visualize history backwards, re-visiting the time before vaccines and medicine in general, and how people just horribly died in large numbers of diseases we don't even think of as deadly any more.

But what are the odds vaccine deniers would believe historic record, right?

The plague pandemics? Never happened; it's just a fabrication to promote vaccination.

There’s no problem with my argument. Enough people are voluntarily getting vaccines that it doesn’t justify government forcing people to, which I am philosophically opposed to unless absolutely necessary.

I’ve repeatedly said I’d be willing to reconsider if that changes.

A beloved family member you care about very much is sick. They are in the hospital receiving treatment but their body and immune system are already taxed to the limit fighting to survive. A new Nurse arrives on shift, upon initial meeting the Nurse tells you that "I don't believe in vaccination and have never been vaccinated for contagious disease." Do you want that Nurse to take care of your sick family member? Or do you tell the supervisor you want a different nurse?

Nice straw man and appeal to emotions. Health care providers are already required to be vaccinated (at least in my state). That’s a perfectly reasonable condition of employment for that profession.

I don't consider this a fallacy, if you follow the whole libertarian idea of a person should be able to claim philosophical exemptions for their children shouldn't that immutable right to exemption also apply to everyone?

In the years 1331-1351, half the population of China, and one third of that of Europe, died in the Black Death pandemic. That is preventable by a vaccine.

> forcing people to do things to their body.

Ah, but, firstly, your child's body isn't your body; that's a separate human being who has a right not to have idiot parents interfere with their survival.

Secondly, one person's immunization status affects others around them. It's not just a personal choice. Choosing not to be immunized and being around people is somewhat like smoking.

Actually, the Black Death was caused by a bacteria, not a virus. It could have been cured with antibiotics, not vaccines.

I checked my facts before posting: vaccination does exist for Yersinia pestis. Though that particular pathogen is not commonly targeted by vaccination, it is not true that vaccines are just for viruses, whereas we just let people contract bacterial diseases and then fight them with antibiotics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine#Effectiveness

"Vaccines also help prevent the development of antibiotic resistance. For example, by greatly reducing the incidence of pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, vaccine programs have greatly reduced the prevalence of infections resistant to penicillin or other first-line antibiotics."

Sourced from Nature Journal: https://web.archive.org/web/20170722121157/http://www.nature...

> I checked my facts before posting

You're right, and I've never thought about the pneumonia vaccine being against bacteria as well, even though I've taken it myself.

> a right not to have idiot parents interfere

The only reasonable default assumption is that even "idiot" parents have more interest in the survival and well-being of their own children than the vaccination industry equivalent of the Sackler family.

Who is the "vaccination industry equivalent" of the Sackler family and what's wrong with them?