CO HB19-1312 School Immunization Requirements

[J]

Compel it for public school. They have no current nor added way to compel it with this bill in general.

And this isn't a no victim item. Put those kids in school with my kid, and it's a risk to me and my family.

Comparing this to gun control is asinine. If you want to compare apples to apples, compare it to legalizing a game of blindfolded, point in random direction, Russian roulette. There are empty cylinders, and you have no idea if you are pointed in a safe direction or not. But you really have no control over it, you can't see, and you can't know if the cylinder is loaded.

Want to play that game on your own private acreage. Cool. Do it near my kid and I have problems.

[Skip]

Couldn't it be low rates due to vaccines? And given the recent outbreaks in the US, I don't see a problem with it. Don't want to get vaccinated? Then stay out away from the public.

Sorry ?low vaccination rate.? CO has a low rate as a state putting us at risk of outbreaks.

Yeah we are talking about that a lot on page 1.

[Ridge]

Sorry ?low vaccination rate.? CO has a low rate as a state putting us at risk of outbreaks.

Yeah we are talking about that a lot on page 1.

Oh, I thought you meant low infection rate, my bad.

[Skip]

It’s going to be brutal if we get with anything.

[Gman]

When I was a kid, you had to get your vaccines if you went to public school. Then again, polio wasn't that far in the rearview mirror and our parents remembered. There were survivors that were regular reminders. Smallpox also left its mark around the same time. Vaccines were seen as life savers, not perceived risks without a scientific basis.

You want to send your kid to public school, they should be vaccinated. You want to home school or find a private school willing to assume the risk of an outbreak among unvaccinated kids, that's your choice.

[Skip]

When I was a kid, you had to get your vaccines if you went to public school. Then again, polio wasn't that far in the rearview mirror and our parents remembered. There were survivors that were regular reminders. Smallpox also left its mark around the same time. Vaccines were seen as life savers, not perceived risks without a scientific basis.

You want to send your kid to public school, they should be vaccinated. You want to home school or find a private school willing to assume the risk of an outbreak among unvaccinated kids, that's your choice.

I remember getting shots but I don't remember any drama about them or kids not having them. If that concerned existed in the 80s, I was ignorant of it.

I had another thought last night... The idea of clustering non-vaccinated kids in a confined area is probably a really bad one too. In some of these stories you see isolated innocents that were either controlled or vaccinated people served as a "break." Create a special school/community of unvaccinated kids and there would be no breaks, it would ripple through that entire community.

[J]

Play stupid games and all that??

In which case, could that be charged as child neglect? Leave a kid unattended in the bathtub, probably going to be ok. But consequences are steep when it goes wrong. That's why you don't do it, and get charged if something bad happens.

I don't see a lot of difference there. The kid has no choice, and if something bad happens that could have been easily prevented, should that be considered neglect? I dunno, but food for thought.

[Skip]

Play stupid games and all that??

In which case, could that be charged as child neglect? Leave a kid unattended in the bathtub, probably going to be ok. But consequences are steep when it goes wrong. That's why you don't do it, and get charged if something bad happens.

I don't see a lot of difference there. The kid has no choice, and if something bad happens that could have been easily prevented, should that be considered neglect? I dunno, but food for thought.

The kid has no choice because the parent is the patient and the patient has the right to evaluate risks and refuse treatments according to his/her own values and determination. I don't know how you criminalize this without creating a slippery slope. And I don't trust the politicians to put good boundaries on it.

[FoxtArt]

In my perfect imagination world (that in reality, would probably result in the world being burned into a crisp and all nukes detonating), anyway...

1) I think it should be a threshold requirement to public school as others have said. If your parents can't prove immunization, your parents are SOL if they want to use the state babysitting service. (that's all US public schools are).

2) I think instead of any kind of child abuse or neglect, it should be a very steep chargeable offense of a new category, e.g. "Reckless dispersion of infectious agent" with both criminal consequences and civil liability that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, with no defense of ignorance. Might make the vaxxers think twice. Spread measles to twenty people because you're a jackass? Yeah, that's probably the end of your financial well being, forever, just like it could be the end of someone's life (especially a young life). Would also apply to things like HIV positive people having unprotected sex w/o informing their partner.

[Skip]

I like #1. Zundfolge mentioned that on page 1. It really is the best idea because it does not compel or force it. If you're on the gov program you have to meet the gov standard(s).

I think #2 would be hard. For some cases it would be easy to trace but others? Going back to that stat I posed, 12% of CO kindergarteners are not vaccinated (MMR). That's 1 out of every 8. We probably come in contact with these kids often and a lot of that contact is casual; grocery store, parks, church, restaurants, etc...