Forcible vaccination and quarantining aren’t the same thing. I can be prevented from carrying a firearm in a federal courtroom. Or an airport. It’s not the same thing as sending the jackboots to my house and physically taking my gun away.
I have had, in the course of my life, FIVE rubella vaccinations. For one reason or another. Imagine my surprise when I had my titer checked and it was ZERO. No antivaccine person here. I resemble a pincushion.
Unlike you, my first choice isn’t to demand my neighbor who has an objection to the vaccine to get it or else. I have no desire to send the jackboots to a dissenters house to physically sit on them and inject them with something which they have have a genuine religious or philosophical objection.
Why is there no ‘Plan B’? Ie, TREATMENT for the disease. Why, after FIFTY YEARS of a Rubella vaccine is there NO plan B? And no research in that direction! Why is the only apparent ‘Plan’ ever increasing uptake of Plan A, the vaccine? Why have we wasted FIFTY YEARS of chance with this? Chasing diseases of ever decreasing epidemiological benefit? Because we think the vaccine strains will never mutate and smack us in the behind? Because well educated (at our expense, btw) terrorists will never, ever, in a million years mutate any of those strains in the lab? Measles would make a *great* bioweapon. With only a few mutations easily accomplished in a college lab. In Saudi, or Pakistan, or...
Fear of your neighbors naieve immune system is no different than fear of their loaded gun. Both of which cause you no danger right now, possibly ever. But make you FEEL unsafe. So government needs to do something about that. RIGHT NOW. Or ELSE.
Because it looks, to me (and I worked in the industry for years, unlike Jenny McCarthy, Playboy would have paid me to keep my clothes on!), like Plan A represents an endless guaranteed income stream, times every citizen. Possibly with boosters every 15 years for the rest of their lives. And Plan B doesn’t. Maybe it’s a matter of the bottom line. Because, unlike some posters on the board, I’m aware of the fact that vaccine divisions are BIG business at pharma companies. It never hurts to be both mandated and indemnified, does it?
Oops, I guess I answered my own question :)
No, it's not done in the manner of armed thugs showing up at your house and forcing vaccinations. But it's a requirement for going to school, traveling, and some employment. Since I work in medical research, for example, I have to have a Tb test every year, and I have had the Hep A and B vaccines. I know that parents are allowed to use "religious objections" as a reason to get their kids exempted from vaccinations, but with as many as 27% of parents claiming such exemptions in some areas, and the concurrent rise of disease cases, I wonder how long claiming such an exemption is going to be allowed. Herd immunity is probably non-existent in a 73% vaccinated population.
I have had, in the course of my life, FIVE rubella vaccinations. For one reason or another. Imagine my surprise when I had my titer checked and it was ZERO. No antivaccine person here. I resemble a pincushion.
When I was in Navy boot camp back in 1980, they checked everyone's rubella titer. I was one of the three lucky people who tested negative, and was sent to the clinic to receive the vaccine. To this day, I don't know if I received the vaccine as a child and didn't respond (in which case I have no guarantee that the vaccine given in boot camp worked), or if I was just lucky and never got exposed to rubella. Either way, I have never had that disease.
Why is there no ‘Plan B’? Ie, TREATMENT for the disease. Why, after FIFTY YEARS of a Rubella vaccine is there NO plan B? And no research in that direction! Why is the only apparent ‘Plan’ ever increasing uptake of Plan A, the vaccine? Why have we wasted FIFTY YEARS of chance with this? Chasing diseases of ever decreasing epidemiological benefit? Because we think the vaccine strains will never mutate and smack us in the behind? Because well educated (at our expense, btw) terrorists will never, ever, in a million years mutate any of those strains in the lab? Measles would make a *great* bioweapon. With only a few mutations easily accomplished in a college lab. In Saudi, or Pakistan, or...
Actually, there is a lot of research into treatment of infectious disease. But treatment is far more expensive and less effective than vaccination. If we were to take the approach of treating disease instead of preventing it, our medical system could soon be overwhelmed. Our research resources are better spent researching those diseases for which we don't (and may never have) a vaccination. I'm not so worried about those diseases mutating--the flu mutates almost on a yearly basis, and there seems to be a vaccine for it every year. Some of the other diseases haven't shown quite the adaptability of flu, and I have no doubt that, having already developed a vaccine against those organisms, it wouldn't take long to develop another.