Punishing Those Who Refuse to Vaccinate

[Dallas Wildman]

Here are two items to consider:

1)There are Libertarians who object to mandated vaccinations as a violation of the non-aggression principle.

2)Some states allow "religious" exceptions from getting vaccines and go as far as shield them from liability when their collective stupidity costs lives.

A solution may easily solve both issues:
Any infection or death as a result of such negligence will incur civil and criminal liabilities.

Applicable crimes are as follows:

Reckless endangerment
Aggravated Assault/Assault with a deadly weapon
Manslaughter/Negligent homicide

This way there are incentives for everyone to vaccinate against truly dangerous and contagious diseases like Polio, Measles, Meningitis et cetera while preventing mandates for vaccines for diseases that require VERY NARROW vectors for infection like STDs or otherwise tend be a nuisance.

In the very least punishment will boil down to a choice:
Take the vaccine and pay all prescribed restitution and fines.
Go to jail until the vaccine is accepted.

I'm suggesting this because since we have to put up with a public school system, exceptions should absolutely NOT be allowed for religious reasons.  Polio kills, so vaccinate your child for crying out loud.  On the other hand Chicken Pox (and the rest of the Herpes strains and HPV <I think>) tend to be a nuisance.

[dallen68]

Another approach might be to separate the non-vaccers from the rest of the school population.

I tend to disagree that vaccinating for normally non-lethal ailments is a "nuisance"; especially since most schools have a maximum ten day absence policy per calendar year. (You get the chicken pox, and you're out for about 10 days)

As for the rest of it, if you can show that a specific individual's negligence caused your child harm, you most certainly can sue for restitution. However, it's an uphill battle as you have to demonstrate that your own negligence was not a contributory factor. In this case, you would have to show that YOUR child was immunized before you could point fingers at someone else for not having THEIR child immunized. And of course, that's the rub of it: If your child is immunized, the chances of catching (whatever it happens to be) are greatly reduced, even if they are exposed. Most of the time, when there's an outbreak of (something) in a school, or whatever, it's because a significant number of students weren't immunized, or at least not immunized properly.

Along that line, one work-place policy/social criteria I've always disagreed with is people thinking they're heroes for coming to work with the cold/flu/chicken pox/whatever else.  If you know that you have a communicable disease, stay home and get well, and not spread it to everybody else.

As far as "religious exception" that's a little more tricky. As I said in the beginning, I suppose we could separate those children from the general population; but then there would be a risk of running afoul the equal opportunities statutes.  We could run the "religious exception" like the draft board used to run the "conscientious objector status due to religious belief" exception. Essentially, you'd have to demonstrate, or have a religious official from your religion testify, that it is in fact forbidden in your religion.