Should parents who refuse childhood vaccines be liable if their choice harms someone else’s kid?
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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?
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.
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And if vaccinations are against their religion? I’m not siding with them btw just curious how other people want to handle cult members in regards to holding them liable.
If they choose to not vaccinate their child, fine. But they shouldn’t then expose other people to their children’s infections.
It gets messier when they are communicable before symptoms are showing. But if my Sally and your Bobby were at a party with 10 other kids, and the next day bobby is showing symtoms, and then a week later a binch of kids at the party are as well, then they should be held responsible.
Especially if they had reason to believe Bobby had been exposed to it days prior.
Make your choices, but if your religious choices are that important to you, then account for how that impacts other choices you make, and don’t put other people at risk.
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I don’t disagree with this mindset, but I do want to say that it should be on the plaintiff to prove your child caused the problem rather than the defendant to prove they did not. Proving a negative is damn near impossible in court.
Agreed - it’s pretty unlikely that you’d be able to prove something like that.
I suppose you could try to apply precedents surrounding HIV disclosure, but I think it’d be a tough sell.
Edit: And to be clear, even in that situation, we’re talking about disclosure, not actual treatment-related choices.
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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?
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.
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And if vaccinations are against their religion? I’m not siding with them btw just curious how other people want to handle cult members in regards to holding them liable.
“Religious freedom” doesn’t give people the right to endanger public health.
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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.
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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?
We’re dangerously close to “it’s illegal to be contagious”.
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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?
It’s not an unreasonable idea. The parents should absolutely be held liable.
Exact responsibility would be virtually impossible to prove, though. Even a lawyer who graduated at the bottom of their class from a terrible law school could easily defend the accused parents.
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This right here, there’s nothing preventing the religion from being followed. And being in a religion doesn’t make you not responsible for your actions.
I doubt they’d see it that way and pull out the ol’ persecution complex but I agree with you guys. They can quarantine at least.
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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.
I mean, from a simple enforcement perspective “prove that you’re vaxxed” runs into the same problem as “prove that you’re a legal resident”.
Access to health care, access to documentation of that health care, and the ability to produce it on demand all require certain amenities that marginalized people don’t have. It’s a rule that inevitably penalizes people for being poor.
Shy of getting people chipped and slotting your medical records into the same system that we use for criminal enforcement, the folks enforcing the laws will default to the assumption that you’re at fault until you can prove otherwise.
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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.
Naw gotta hit em in the pocketbooks.
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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.
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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.
I wonder if the numbers could back that up? Like the cost of treatment of an unvaccinated child getting a preventable disease, versus a vaccinated child getting the same disease? Also, the number of children in each group? No vaccine is 100% after all.
There could be an actual cost to the healthcare system for choosing to not vaccinate. If that’s the case, creating an incentive like a tax credit for vaccinating could be an effective way of reducing cost overall.
I’d like to see someone study this, if they haven’t already.
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How are you going to deal with pesky things like religious freedoms and the Mennonites/similar cults?
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We’re dangerously close to “it’s illegal to be contagious”.
If there is no disease there is no contagious.
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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?
Liable for what? Medical expenses, funeral costs? Expected life earnings? What about the homeschool/tutoring expenses of immunocompromised kids that didn’t catch measles because the were withdrawn from school due to fear of an outbreak. I’m not trying to throw out straw men to muddy the water, but where do you draw the line between someone’s actions and their consequences.
I’m not talking about criminal charges, just basic responsibility.
Maybe we should be. There are consequences to reckless driving and drunk driving independent of whether you actually harm someone because this actions are inherently dangerous to others.
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How are you going to deal with pesky things like religious freedoms and the Mennonites/similar cults?
Ignore them when they harm society. They don’t get the freedom to commit murder and they shouldn’t get the freedom to not follow public health requirement just because they have some mumbo jumbo excuse.
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I wonder if the numbers could back that up? Like the cost of treatment of an unvaccinated child getting a preventable disease, versus a vaccinated child getting the same disease? Also, the number of children in each group? No vaccine is 100% after all.
There could be an actual cost to the healthcare system for choosing to not vaccinate. If that’s the case, creating an incentive like a tax credit for vaccinating could be an effective way of reducing cost overall.
I’d like to see someone study this, if they haven’t already.
It seems so fundamental to the equation “how much of a village it should take”. To me, that’s the only hard metric that matters (not on an individual level, by any means, but averaged out, over the long term trend).
What is the cost to each of us as individuals so that we may all, on average, enjoy a better quality of life than we do today.
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Im not a judge.
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I don’t disagree with this mindset, but I do want to say that it should be on the plaintiff to prove your child caused the problem rather than the defendant to prove they did not. Proving a negative is damn near impossible in court.
If your choices raise everyone else’s risk, it’s fair that you carry some of the burden. Courts deal in probability every day.
Honestly, I’d settle for disclosure, especially now that they’re removing school requirements in some states. It would be worth it to me to know which kids/ parents to keep my kids away from.
