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;

Failing to Provide the Necessaries of Life (Offence) - Criminal Law Notebook

(www.criminalnotebook.ca)

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.

If it can be proven. Yes. But there are too many variables to be able to prove it usually.

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)

Antibodies?

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?

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?

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?

No, they should just not be allowed to prevent their children from being vaccinated.

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.

Not everyone can be vaccinated.

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.

prepare for what situations you run into where you know it’s possible to be stabbed

And what might those preparations look like? How does one prepare for that, as well as for the possibility of getting shot, or being run over by a car while on the sidewalk, or getting mugged/pickpocketted, or getting your credit card information stolen, or having your home being broken into and ransacked, or someone picking up your infant and running away with them, or having your drink/food spiked, etc.

Get a vaccine.  Nobody should every be able to take that right from you.

A vaccine is never 100% effective. If it were, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place. 3% of people receiving the measles vaccine don’t get immunity, and there’s those who can’t get the vaccine because they’re too young, or are immunocompromised in some way. What option would they have for dealing with their own lives without controlling others?

And what might those preparations look like?

All preparations for disaster look like a cost-benefit analysis and reasonable actions taken to mitigate those disasters. Sometimes, that means relying on collective tools - laws, incentives, etc., which can be easier sometimes, if it works. Other times, it’s internal planning, or physical training, or avoidance of problematic situations.

Another big aspect of preparation that people can do is genuinely coming to terms with the existence of whatever particular problem they’re facing. “Radical acceptance”, so to speak, though one needs to know the difference between accepting and submitting. When you can’t accept something, you end up blindsided by it, shocked and appalled that it can happen to you, or that humans can’t just talk it through, or whatever. When you can, you generally see it coming a ways away, and can address it before it becomes an issue for you, instead of thinking “I shouldn’t have to deal with this,” or “but humanity is better than that, and we can just talk it through.”

But, that kind of preparation takes a lot of world-view shifting, and skill-building in processing fears, and for people who don’t really have evidence of the benefit, it’s hard to pay the cost in time and effort on personal growth in that area. C’est la vie.

A vaccine is never 100% effective. […]

Indeed. However, there must be a line for what a collective can or cannot reasonably impose on an individual. And, whether you like it or not, the physical body is a real boundary, and granting a collective governing body power over what you put into or take out of your own body is a larger issue than vaccination, and people will utilize that power against you, not just for you.

This is true enough that as soon as the Democrats started pushing for mandatory vaccinations during covid, I knew and stated that the cost would be abortion. …and that’s exactly what was lost, in many states.

Any power you give the government, will be used all of the ways it can be used, depending on the party in power and the moral fads that the culture goes through - and as you can see with trump and the underlying expressions going on there, these fads aren’t always going to be in your favor.

Although there are some areas that are morally more stable, any area that doesn’t have fairly universal support will go through this dynamic of flipping what side gets to utilize that power, and in what way it is used.

Case in point:

The Republicans centralized power in the presidency with the USA Patriot act. The Democrats, in power when it expired, renewed it, rather than letting it drop, or (even better) making an act to prevent that centralization of power. Obama utilized that power to great effect, including to fulfill the reason for it’s temporary existence. …and then he renewed it, when it was no longer needed, and after it had expired, because of lack of ability to consider that maybe power isn’t always a good thing, and sometimes you need to let go for things to work right.

…and the dems can’t keep hold of that power. …and now that power is Trump’s and the reps in general, until their fire burns out.

As a side note: The irony is that maybe Trump, if he thinks the dems will win, might nerf presidential powers out of spite - which would be great, if it sticks.