[Dig1t]

Please don’t flame me, this is an honest question.

Why is this unethical and for whom?

The vaccines work, so parents who choose to vaccinate their kids will be protected.

Parents who don’t trust the vaccine for whatever reason, they feel strongly that they might harm their child.

Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?

You’re basically asking parents to willfully harm (in their mind they think it’s harmful, I’m not saying it’s actually harmful) their own child, from their perspective why should they make that choice?

I just don’t see how this problem can be solved other than going back to square one and trying to educate people and convince them that vaccines are not harmful. The alternative is to force people to accept these injections even though people believe they are harmful, which just isn’t going to work well in the United States.

[zippothrowaway]

No one is forcing parents to vaccinate your kids. It's just that in sane societies we say you can't use a public school if you're not vaccinated and otherwise healthy.

A moment's thought will tell you that it's to protect kids that are at risk from infectious diseases (e.g. immunocompromised cancer patients) that cannot be vaccinated.

So most people would agree that it's unfair that a cancer patient cannot attend a public school, through no fault of their own, because a parent wants their healthy kid to attend the school unvaccinated. We balance the rules accordingly.

[SilverElfin]

> No one is forcing parents to vaccinate your kids.

Yes, they are. If your kids are not allowed to attend school, then you are being forced to vaccinate them because you may not have other options. Claiming otherwise is gaslighting.

> It's just that in sane societies we say you can't use a public school if you're not vaccinated and otherwise healthy.

So do those parents get a voucher for the funds pertaining to their child’s public education, if they’re prevented?

[ViewTrick1002]

Are children the parents’ property or an individual we as a society should work to guarantee the best outcome?

Should parents be allowed to kill their property?

[fragmede]

Of course, we just don't agree on when it is acceptable. Between the ages of -.75 and -.50, it's generally legal to. Shifting the Overton window to make it legal for ages up to, say, 15, would be one for an ultra-left wing party to throw out there, just to disrupt the national conversation.

[SilverElfin]

[flagged]

[anigbrowl]

No they are not. If you abuse them you can be put in prison and unlike property you can't sell them or use them as collateral. Propertarian ideology is delusional.

[SilverElfin]

I used the word “property” in quotes because I am just repeating the word the earlier comment used. I’m not suggesting you can sell people. You’re attacking a strawman.

Regardless - my point stands that children belong first to the parents. Using words like “abuse”, which aren’t applicable to this situation at hand, is just a way to appeal to emotion rather than acknowledging that states taking over parental judgment is explicitly authoritarian.

[zippothrowaway]

1) you ignored my main point about children who cannot be vaccinated. Way to go.

2) with regard to gaslighting, should parents be allowed to send their kids to public schools naked? What's the difference in compulsion?

[strbean]

Parents don't have sole discretion about their child's well-being. As pointed out by another reply, "I thought it was best for them" doesn't hold up when the wealth of evidence shows they are endangering or harming their child.

> The vaccines work, so parents who choose to vaccinate their kids will be protected.

This is false for a number of reasons.

1) Vaccines don't provide perfect protection, breakthrough infections can occur.

2) Some people can not receive vaccinations due to health conditions.

3) Immunocompromised people are not protected by vaccines.

We managed to make it illegal to beat the crap out of your kids even though there are still plenty of Americans who think not beating your kids is harmful to them.

[Dig1t]

Well I agree and understand that herd immunity exists and it protects the small number of kids who can’t get the vaccine for whatever reason. But the choice is still the same, you’re asking parents to prioritize someone else’s child over their own and if they believe that it is dangerous to do so then why would they do that?

I don’t believe there are any people who believe that NOT beating their children is dangerous. If you put yourself in these parents’ shoes, they basically see this stuff as poison. What you’re asking them to do (in their mind) is inject their children with poison and for no other reason than because the government says so. It’s just a losing battle, you need to educate these people and show them that they are safe, address their concerns directly.

I would not inject my children with mercury if the government told me to. I would need to be convinced that mercury is safe and beneficial before I allowed my kid to be injected with it. I don’t feel like equating this to physical violence is helpful at all because in this case these parents believe they are preventing harm to their children.

[_DeadFred_]

It has been proven. It has been proven to benefit EVERYONE way more than any harm it could cause. I hope you and the others that give these 'concerns' (that if we are honest, these sorts of people will never have a bar high enough that they will say they are satisfied have been met) give generously to our country's future polio beggars in the streets. You might be too young to have experienced what happens to the victims, the suffering that you consider these 'concerns' to outway. It's is horrible to inflict on the population. Measles/mumps are going to result in a lot more deaf people like it was when I was a kid. Polio in lots more paralyzed children.

This is the suffering you are OK with because 'concerns':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfoxqghXxEs

[isolli]

Covid vaccines are the elephant in the room. In many jurisdictions, children were coerced to take them for no good reason. Like it or not, we are dealing with the fallout of extremely poor decisions made recently...

[elp]

The covid response was done poorly done in classic knee jerk style and a bunch of authoritarian aholes used it as chance to act like authoritarian aholes. Also yes once the virus evolved to Omicron to avoid the vaccine we probably didn't need all the boosters they tried to push.

But the medical community was acting with the best knowledge they had at the time as imperfect as it was. Tell me how did taking the vaccine harm any child? It wasn't painful. Immediate side effects were minimal to non-existent. Myocarditis and Carditis incidence was something like 65/million. Even then most of those recovered without any treatment. Median hospital stay for those that needed it was 2 nights and most recovered without permanent issues.

I think the final death toll from the vaccine was estimated at around 1/million. Meanwhile at the height of the delta strain the death toll for anyone infected was well over 1/100 ( more than 10% for the over 60s).

The fallout doesn't make rational sense.

[robocat]

I wish I had your arrogant confidence.

I'm a vaxer But one community I hang with is strongly antivax. Many of them have been very harmed even if they didn't take the vaccines.

When something is that important to you (even for woowoo reasons or social media misinformation) then it is a fertile situation for mental health impacts.

Antivaxxers are a vulnerable population too (they have self selected into a circle by their beliefs and communities).

Disclosure: I've seen some good people severely harmed by overbearing government actions in New Zealand. I believe New Zealand did a good job of protecting everyone here from COVID, but that the collateral costs to everyone were very high (and extremely variable chronic costs to some).

Edit: apology that I've bucketed all vaccines together. E.g. Measles vaccine is quite different from covid vaccines.

[_DeadFred_]

You can empathize with your friends’ personal beliefs, but when those beliefs put children at risk, society has to draw a line. Vaccination is basic health hygiene required for large groups of people to live, learn, and function closely together without constant outbreaks. The requirement is minimal: if you want access to public education, you agree to the few safeguards that make it possible for the masses to share space safely (you use the bathroom, you wash your hands, you shower, you get vaccines).

Imagine if I said 'my religion doesn't allow running water, I should be allowed to defecate anywhere, and also science says toilets increase the risk of hemorrhoids, and you can't make me give my kids hemorrhoids'. You can't allow that, not because you don't agree with it, but because the way we live in groups needs artificial sanitation. Just like we need artificial stimulation of immune systems.

[robocat]

I am not talking about empathy with friends (I'm not sure why you assumed that). I am certainly not saying "don't immunise". I suspect you're making assumptions about me, but to be clear I am strongly pro vaccination and pro-science.

Each vaccination has costs and benefits. The science is amazing at reducing the physical risks.

I am just asking you to understand that some people are seriously psychologically harmed by requiring vaccinations (for themselves or for their children). It may be irrational, unscientific or selfish but I have seen how real the harm is for some people. That harm is a complex grey area. It should rarely trump the needs of children or society.

Society has a variety of ways to balance that harm against the expected benefits.

The second half of your comment is just a strawman story. And introducing religion as a topic is usually a poor idea.

[BugsJustFindMe]

> Well I agree and understand that herd immunity exists and it protects the small number of kids who can’t get the vaccine for whatever reason.

You need to understand that herd immunization actually helps everyone, not just some small number of children who can't get vaccinated, because even the best vaccines don't offer 100% protection.

Your odds of getting sick are based on the odds that other people around you are contagious. That much should be extremely obvious, because every encounter with a contagion rolls the dice again.

What's less obvious is how much that matters because math is hard. Even if you have 95% immunity to some infectious disease, your probability of getting it at least once after 10 exposures is a whopping 40% (1 - 0.95^10). Everyone's protection, yours included, comes from reducing your chances of being unwittingly exposed because the people around you aren't getting sick, and that means vaccinating them too. When one person gets sick, everyone around them is put at increased risk. The way you fix that for everyone is by making it less likely that any member of the herd gets sick from any given exposure.

[SilverElfin]

> Parents don't have sole discretion about their child's well-being.

In a just society they should have sole discretion. The current situation where kids aren’t even allowed to walk to school without CPS harassing parents, is because of this attitude where the state thinks it has any rights to your kids.

[conception]

Of course it does. If you abuse your children, the state enforces the rights of your children. If you put their life in danger, the state can and should take them from you. Parents do not own their children any more than the state does and their rights should be protected by both parties.

The CPS issue is because of litigation not protection. No one wants to be responsible for something bad happening.

[SilverElfin]

> Parents do not own their children any more than the state does and their rights should be protected by both parties.

Yes, they absolutely own their children more than the state does. I can’t believe there are any claims otherwise. Do you value the bond between parent and child and how special it is? Nothing should violate that. Not even the rare parent that is actually neglectful - meaning that should curtail the freedoms of the typical parent. And anyways, choosing to forego a vaccine isn’t abuse - on average it shifts outcomes very little. For example skipping a flu vaccine won’t change much.

[intended]

Female Genital Mutilation is something parents do to their children.

A parental bond doesn’t overwhelm a child’s own rights as citizens and human beings.

Parents live in a society, even if it were a village, and there is no free pass to do just what you will if it crosses lines.

Collective health is one of those lines.

[LocalH]

Parents do not "own" their children, at all.

[BugsJustFindMe]

> In a just society they should have sole discretion.

I think you need to spend some time thinking about how your idea of a just society is that child abuse is ok if parents do it.

[lm28469]

Read into heard immunity, not everyone can be vaccinated, not every vaccinated person gets full immunity, more vaccinated people = safer for everyone.

This doesnt work anymore because people are more individualistic than ever, unless something will directly harm them in a very obvious way in the next hour it's as if it didn't exist in their mind

Kind of like spouse of illegal migrants who voted trump, or people surviving thanks to medicaid voting against their own interest, they're so blinded by rage/outrage that they can't even understand basic logic. I personally think we're at a breaking point in most of the west and it'll only be going downhill from now on, so just as you I don't see any solution. The education system can't fight social media, and you can't "force" people you've been brainwashing for decades into believing the be all end all of human life is their little unlimited personal freedom

[aredox]

>Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?

Then isn't it unethical of these parents to force the other parents - the rest of society - who think illnesses are dangerous to cohabitate with their kids who could be highly contagious, and breed and mutate viruses?

It goes both ways. "Society" is made of humans too.

[stasa]

Herd immunity is important - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

[Dig1t]

I am aware of herd immunity, but the same statement applies. You are asking parents to inject their children with something they think is dangerous. They are going to prioritize their own child’s health over a small percentage of other children, especially as social trust decreases over time.

[bdangubic]

What if me, as a parent, decide that it is insane my child to wear clothes because their skin will get fucked up from fabric? OK for my kid to walk around the school naked? What if I think it is in the best interest of my boy to be tough and tell him it is OK to punch the lights out of anyone he wants in school, other kid, teacher, whatever? I am a parent after all and I only care about my child - your or other children in the school are not my concern, all this good?

[n4r9]

One of the functions of government is to ensure the health of its citizens. Potential harms have to be weighed against individual liberty. Parental choices can affect the health of their and other children. The line has to go somewhere. Some parents don't even believe in feeding their children: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62v59621dro

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> Why is this unethical and for whom?

People with auto-immune disorders who can't safely take the vaccine lose the protection of herd immunity. (Edit: and the children who don't have control over their own health outcomes.)

Agreed that it's not an easy problem to solve.

[SilverElfin]

> Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?

Yes, it is unethical. The other comments don’t agree, but this is exactly the position a lot of people hold. In the end, parents should be allowed to judge the risk for their own children based on their experience. Not allowing for that is basically thought control.

The real issue is that parents who want herd immunity to protect their own children, don’t want to also protect their children by keeping THEM away from the public or having THEM take precautions (like wearing masks or whatever). Instead, they want the risk to be taken by other people, which is unethical.

[realityfactchex]

Gosh, please accept these remarks in the most positive spirit possible.

> Yes, it is unethical

Agreed on that.

> The real issue is that parents who want herd immunity to protect their own children...

Arguably, for some, the "real issue" is whether viruses have even been reasonably shown to exist at all with something other than a) appeal to authority or b) other logical fallacy.

For instance, if one reads many virology papers (just a PubMed search away) for detail and understanding, one may find that there are not actually scientifically controlled studies proving the existence and causal nature of so-called viral particles, but instead the papers are a house of cards that undo themselves. There's no science in the The Science™ -- just enough to look like it and pass muster among people just trying to get along in this hectic and challenging world.

--> The cognitive dissonance (and conditioning) is so loud on the above point, that most people will label the claim a Conspiracy Theory and become instinctively distraught or look the other way in emotion, unable to bear scrutinizing the claim.

Thus, to assume that

> they want the risk to be taken by other people

is missing the point entirely, for a quite serious and well-informed contingent of conscientious objectors to vaccination requirements.

At that point, it is moot to point out that, if people are convinced by the likes of world's greatest omnichannel marketing campaigns that they need a certain product put into their body (for fear of death and disease), nothing stops those people from doing as they please to themselves.

After all, if the product really (a) is safe and (b) works, then the customers of that product certainly have nothing to worry about. (Nobody needs to convince *other people* to take a product, if it works for them.)

[zaptheimpaler]

It's unethical because vaccines don't work 100% of the time so if the disease is allowed to spread, some vaccinated people will also get the disease and suffer the consequences. If some of these horrific diseases actually start circulating again commonly, it will mean a LOT of vulnerable people will basically not be able to go out into the public at all. Many of the diseases we vaccinate against like measles or polio have horrific lifelong consequences. It's condemning many people who didn't make that choice

This is ethical only in the extremist libertarian view where personal choice trumps all. Some parents probably believe that beating their child or otherwise abusing them is good for the child.. so should we just let them do that? There IS an end to personal liberty, it's not unlimited. "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins"

I totally get what you're saying about these people not trusting the vaccines and the education problems though, and maybe the solution will have to be to meet these people where they are and try to educate them out of the misinformation hole. Here's one small example of how that goes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o69BiOqY1Ec (it does not go well..)

It's very very hard to change these people's minds and we genuinely don't have any answers to how to do that. It's a very hard problem because all of us take an experts word for it at some level of reasoning, the anti-vaxxers just believe in different "experts". You can't go deep enough into the science and papers and experiments to really undeniably show everyone the truth, so how does anyone prove anything? Not to mention these positions often aren't reasoned into, and can't be reasoned out of. Most of us have some experience in trying to change someone's mind on one of these issues and know it fails. A lot of the time some visceral experience has to hit them or something internal has to shift within them and we don't know how to do that.

[fzeroracer]

> Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?

Is it unethical to say parents should feed their kids if they believe food to be dangerous? Is it unethical to stop them from giving their kids bleach if they believe it to be a cure?

The answer is that as a society we have limits around what a parent can or cannot do for the sake of the overall well-being of their children. If a parent refuses to vaccinate their child without a very good reason why (such as other exacerbating health issues or allergic reactions), it should be treated as child abuse. Because it is.

[n4r9]

> parents should feed their kids if they believe food to be dangerous?

In case anyone thinks this is purely hypothetical: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62v59621dro