Does The Gov't Have A Right To Force H1N1 Vaccinations?

I got to talking about the whole H1N1 flu thing to a few of my friends this weekend.

There was an article in the paper about how the Canadian government is beginning to roll out this vaccine, and they recommend anyone between 5 years old and 40 years old get it first.

One of the people who's a friend of a friend reads a lot of those conspiracy websites, and he was all paranoid about it, and mentioned how the government was out to give us cancer or some other deadly disease that would kill us via these vaccinations.

I was like . He then said that so many people are on welfare, or government checks or some form of government assistance now that the system is now close to collapse, and the government will try and kill as many people as possible to save their own skins. That the government has seen what happens throughout history when the rule of law eventually collapses, and how they are usually the first to be hung from the rafters and are now taking steps to ensue they stay in power. There was a lot of other stuff he said, about Japan wanting to pay us back for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and some other stuff that was also pretty whacky.

Well, whatever. I'm not much to believe in conspiracy theories, but it got me thinking...

Does the government have the right to force it's population to get inoculated from a flu? At what point would they be right in forcing people to take the vaccine at gunpoint?

I can see two sides of the argument. The first is for the choice of freedom. An adult should be responsible for their own body, and if someone doesn't want the vaccine, they shouldn't have to get it.

But the flip side of that is, if these people end up being carriers, they risk harming the rest of the populace if they get infected.

If the government forced every man, woman and child to get this vaccine, would you comply, or would you resist and take as many of the bastards with you as you could?

Can they force you to take the vaccine? No. Can they force you into quarantine? Yes.

It sounds like he reads this site.

http://www.infowars.com/

Oh god. There is a regular on Sound Off every morning with his crazy conspiracy theories and always trying to get people to go to that site.

Indeed, if you want to live avoid all vaccinations. Avoiding medical care in general is always good advice.

Can't speak to the manifold repercussions of socialized healthcare. Maybe they can mandate inoculations, maybe fried foods can be outlawed, the same goes for tobacco. The requirements and penalties of such a system are foreign to me.

I'm happy knowing I can be as unhealthy as I want to be.

What are they going to do?

Come to my house and force me to take the needle?

The government can go fuck itself.

Corrected.

No, that's the step that comes AFTER you decide you don't like vaccinations or quarantine.

They can try.

[Actually I'll amend this. If you're taking money from the government they can. If you're in the military. If you're on welfare. If you're getting a government bailout or Federally provided health insurance, then they absolutely can.

And that, right there, is the insidious part of Big Government--they take away money you worked for at gunpoint and then dole part of it back to you with strings attached. Did you get money to keep your failing business afloat? Well you'd better not be paying your executives more than we decide is Fair. Getting subsidized to grow (or not grow) a certain crop? Getting $8,000 because you're a first-time home buyer? Congratulations. The Government has sunk its hooks into you. ]

I'm flexible on that point.

As long as their family gets the bill, and not me.

Think they can't?

Good luck getting a child into school without the proper vaccinations.

All they have to do is make employers pay big fines and voila...you won't get hired unless you've had the proscribed gubmint needle. Make a law that says doctors can be sued for malpractice if their patients aren't properly protected and good luck getting any healthcare without having the proscribed gubmint needle.

You will do it, for your own good, or else. It's the best way to sneak in fascist policies and maintain an illusion of freedom.

Explain to me what's "fascist" about preventing you from becoming an infectious threat to your neighbors. Would you prefer to be allowed to get sick, then quarantined for the good of everyone else?

Because the Swine Flu's just that widespread and lethal. Let's all get gubmint injections for the common cold and Ebola Zaire while we're at it.

Don't look at me, man. I never get flu shots. I just do battle with that shit unaided.


Then again, I also stay the fuck home to sleep it off, and I have my own health insurance. And I won't take any shit for that, either. I pay for it and it's mine to do with as I fucking please. That is the beauty of private health care.

You act like that's a bad thing...

I'm glad that the people I work with and their kids are vaccinated for multiple things. I don't want the plague taking out me or anybody else when that shit is totally preventable.

I don't, either, but that doesn't mean I accept the removal of this threat is a reward for which I should be expected to pay on someone else's behalf.

I agree. People should be responsible for buying their own shots and I have no issues with people who don't get the shots being refused jobs or not accepted into schools.

I am not commenting on good or bad either way...just addressing his notion there is nothing the Government can do to make him take a needle if they want to.

Well I guess you're right about this, unless he wants to live in the mountains and grow a unibomber beard he better comply to getting vaccinated.

Man, that sounds fucking great.

:bittersweet:

Seriously, what is stopping you? Read up on survival skills and go, you don't need money to live like that if it is your dream.

I think it's a bit naive to say that money is no obstacle to that. I would ideally park a concrete shithouse full of modern conveniences in the woods.

*Drives around darting everyone*

Should the government be able to deny you the freedom to choose, when you might choose to expose yourself to risk? No.

Freedom to choose when there are no consequences is meaningless; EVERYONE can get behind that freedom. It's the freedom to choose when that choice may carry adverse consequences that matters.

That said, if you don't get immunized (at least against the really serious stuff), you're a fucking moron.

Well, maybe, maybe not. In the case of flu, and the current H1N1 strand in particular, not (of course no one other than wacky conspiracy theorists is proposing mandatory flu vaccinations). But that, of course, is the point on which all mandatory vaccinations must be debated. It's not the risk you take upon yourself that's the issue; it's the risk that a lack of a critical mass of vaccinated people places upon the larger community that matters, and it's the fact that no one, in the end pays for his own catastrophic health care that matters. Your actions, and the collective actions of people who act similarly, have external effects.

Anyone who refuses a vaccination is accepting the risk of not being vaccinated. If you're not vaccinated, the only people you're a real threat to are those who have made the same decision you have.

Fine, I says.

As with any medical treatment, you should consider the risks and benefits before proceeding. I find the anti-immunization folks to be mostly kooks who believe that immunization is behind every problem a child ever has. The science doesn't back them up.

Sure, but that doesn't mean I'm going be in line on the first day. There's always SOMETHING they forgot to account for; I think I'll wait 5 years before getting a new vaccine to see what that something is.

BULLSHIT.

B/c of crazy anti-vaccinationist jihadists, Whooping Cough, which was almost eradicated is now making a comeback.

Thing is modern medicine can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and save those kids whose parents refused to give them the shot, unfortunately they are now carriers and spreading it to infants (have to be 2 to take it) and those who can't take the vaccine. These are the people dying.

So a disease that was one it's way to being eradicated is now on the rise in the U.S..... all b/c some people are so fucking stupid they believe what they read on the internet.

Ah, here we go:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104523437

Absolutely. External costs abound when people don't get many of the common vaccines, and those external costs often involve dead children.

Jenny McCarthy is the devil. The whole vaccines-cause-autism crowd needs to be exiled to the moon, without spacesuits.