Canada just lost its measles-free status. So here’s the question…
If an unvaccinated child spreads measles to someone else’s kid, why shouldn’t the parents be liable in small-claims court?
I’m not talking about criminal charges, just basic responsibility. If your choice creates the risk you should have to prove you weren’t the reason someone else’s child got sick.
Is that unreasonable?
Parents who don’t vaccinate their children without a good medical reason should be treated as any other parent who intentionally abuses, harms, mistreats, or abandons their children, simple as that.
If they harm other people on top of that, then that should probably count as attempted murder plus aggravated assault and battery, or some equivalent.
It’s a shame that rampant wilful idiocy with intent to cause harm and mayhem isn’t a criminal offence, though, because they should also be charged with that.
You know, we eliminated smallpox in the wild, and mostly eliminated polio, by giving vaccines. Fuck these moronic idiotic parents not vaxxing their kiddos. It ABSOLUTELY should count as child abuse to not vax your kid.
No, they should just not be allowed to prevent their children from being vaccinated.
I’m personally of the opinion that refusing to vaccinate your kids should not be a choice parents get to make. Just like how you can’t choose to starve your children, no matter how deeply and truly you believe that we can draw all our necessary sustenance from the air.
In Canada we have a legal concept called the “Duty of persons to provide necessaries.”
Here’s the relevant legal code:
215 (1) Every one is under a legal duty (a) as a parent, foster parent, guardian or head of a family, to provide necessaries of life for a child under the age of sixteen years;
https://www.criminalnotebook.ca/index.php/Failing_to_Provide_the_Necessaries_of_Life_(Offence)
I firmly believe that vaccinations should be deemed one of the “necessaries of life” under this article of the criminal code. Like food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. You shouldn’t have a choice in this matter. We shouldn’t even be talking about whether or not that choice harms someone else’s kid, because that’s actually beside the point. At a basic level, we as a society have already agreed that children’s right to be properly sheltered and cared for outweighs their parents rights to decide how they live. The idea that there should be an exception for vaccines - something that can mean the difference between life and death - is absolutely ridiculous.
Excuse me, I’m breath-tarian /s
Offering a generous tax credit for proof of vaccination ought to resolve the problem easily enough, given the simple-minded and grift-oriented nature of your average antivaxxer.
Yeah, I’m gonna go out on what feels like a very sturdy limb here and say that herd immunity wouldn’t be compromised if everyone who could did, and everyone who can’t didn’t.
And I’m pretty sure that we are:
A) not referring to this demographic in our thread
B) in general, ok with legit medical exemptions, see above for why.
We’re dangerously close to “it’s illegal to be contagious”.
this is the disturbing reality of the current attitude. People have no idea how important body sovereignty is.
The most disturbing thing about reality is that we have morons opting their children and neighbors into preventable diseases because of absurd lies they read on Facebook.
Nah. It’s not concerning that otherwise intelligent people can’t figure out how to deal with their own lives without resorting to controlling others.
Anyone have tips on how to not get stabbed without forcing other people to stop stabbing?
No. You can reasonably take an action against someone that is the same degree of involvement they attempt to do to you. By someone stabbing you, or attempting to, they consent to the same degree of violence against them, by having taken direct action against you.
This is not the same as, for example, someone fleeing from attackers, and knocking on your door, thus potentially drawing the attention of the attackers to you. Of course, you’re free to deny the attackers or the victim entry.
So I can legally/morally stab someone who tried to stab me? How is that at all helpful? I don’t want to stab anyone.
How would this translate to the measles situation? If someone gives me measles, then I’m allowed to give them back measles? But they already have measles. That’s how they were able to transmit it. And I’ll still have gotten the disease. I want to maintain my health and not get infected in the first place.
Then don’t stab anyone, and prepare for what situations you run into where you know it’s possible to be stabbed, but won’t stab in return.
Yes. You can get measles from someone, and can give it to them. The fundamental bad actor is the disease itself, and we address that by getting immunity to it, one way or the other.
Get a vaccine. Nobody should every be able to take that right from you.
Are you an anti-vaxxer?
I’m absolutely for the rights of people to either have or refuse vaccines. Of course, in your mind, that probably just equates to being an anti-vaxxer. I get vaccines when it makes sense to me to do so, which doesn’t include all vaccines.
Yeah, honestly you are an anti-vaxxer if your personal feelings (or crackpot theories) negatively affect your perception of vaccine science even slightly. What you’re expressing here is an idea that has killed countless people and it will only get worse. Everyone should thank you for bringing back measles though, because your valiant freedom fighting “helped” us in that way.
To partake in society you have to accept societal contracts. One such contract is to not be a dick to others. If you don’t vaccinate yourself against certain things, you are liable for spreading the disease. And thus you are being a dick. And thus you break the contract.
If you excuse yourself from society going forward though, I see no problem with your stance.
I think there are a few issues:
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How do you prove kid A gave kid B measels?
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Why isn’t kid B vaccinated? Because they don’t need to be, group immunity. Well that is no longer true with anti vax so…
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Kid B then gives kid C measels, so kid B’s parents are now liable.
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Your in small claims court. You have to prove damages. So you’re going for loss of earning for an adult looking after the kid + pain and suffering. Is that payout going to be worth filing papers, legal advice etc.
You’d be better passing a law to mandate vaccines, but that won’t be politically viable.
Just my thoughts - am not Canadian.
pain and suffering.
Minus this, that’s not a thing in Canada. You could seek future earnings if the child died but that’s hard to prove when they don’t even have a GED and it’s unlikely when the child is dead. (Also would take it out of small claims)
Same here. Your pain and suffering is like $40.
Crazy when you see US damages being in the millions.
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It opens some weird ideas to the game. If you are unvaccinated, yet previously had the illness and recovered, do you need a vaccine. What if you’ve been vaccinated and still spread it. What if you can’t have the vaccines because if of health conditions. Anger does not fix the problem. We need a compromise, not a rule.
Kids shouldn’t be getting measles in the first place. No measles, no problems you described. No anger here.
Bacteria and viruses spread. It’s what they do. We need a way to adapt to them. Vaccines are good, being healthy probably helps more. What we need is real food, housing and health care and education. Instead we have arguments about vaccines. Sad really.
