2y ago

‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates

www.nytimes.com ‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates

Mississippi has long had high childhood immunization rates, but a federal judge has ordered the state to allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.

For more than 40 years, Mississippi had one of the strictest school vaccination requirements in the nation, and its high childhood immunization rates have been a source of pride. But in July, the state began excusing children from vaccination if their parents cited religious objections, after a federal judge sided with a “medical freedom” group.

Today, 2,100 Mississippi schoolchildren are officially exempt from vaccination on religious grounds. Five hundred more are exempt because their health precludes vaccination. Dr. Daniel P. Edney, the state health officer, warns that if the total number of exemptions climbs above 3,000, Mississippi will once again face the risk of deadly diseases that are now just a memory.

“For the last 40 years, our main goal has been to protect those children at highest risk of measles, mumps, rubella, polio,” Dr. Edney said in an interview, “and that’s those children that have chronic illnesses that make them more vulnerable.” He called the ruling “a very bitter pill for me to swallow.”

Mississippi is not an isolated case. Buoyed by their success at overturning coronavirus mandates, medical and religious freedom groups are taking aim at a new target: childhood school vaccine mandates, long considered the foundation of the nation’s defense against infectious disease.

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‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates

www.nytimes.com /2023/12/03/us/politics/mississippi-childhood-vaccine-mandates.html

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Ah yes, that most cherished of freedoms, the freedom to let children die of easily preventable diseases
- Up until now we've mostly seen diseases like measles and chicken pox but I'm expecting polio to show up soon ... then the shit will hit the fan.
  sigh
  
  It's a shame it's the children of the ones who fuck around who get to find out
- ‘Murica!

Can we just call these people pro-pestilence instead of dignifying them with names like 'medical freedom activist'?
I swear this sort of euphemism has become the obvious tell that they're up to no good and still demand respect for it
- Up there with "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" as far as names that usually mean the opposite of what they're claiming, huh?

How many children are going to die because of these very likely 'pro-life' activists?
- Yeah but how many will it save from vaccine death or, worse, autism? I mean surely the vast number of deaths related to childhood vaccinations in the past four decades will uphold their argument.
  Edit: /s
  
  my dude desperately needs that /s
  
  Which vast number?
  
  how many will it save from vaccine death or, worse, autism?
  The number of people that are missing the obvious satire here is making me sad.
  
  Pretty sure this was sarcasm...

‘Medical Freedom’ Activists
Plague rats. They're plague rats.
- Can we just jail or shoot them or something?
- A rat king is quite analogous to the GOP

When someone says "I'm not against all vaccines, just the ones for COVID", he is usually lying. In time this "skepticism" will slide into being against even the common vaccines and it can be seen now. My favorite blog Respectful Insolence had a good post about the so-called "medical freedom":
"Health freedom” and “medical freedom” have become a rallying cry for libertarians, far right wingers, and even outright fascists. Indeed, the Republican Party has become a bastion of antivaccine and anti-public health hostility, a process that actually predates the pandemic by at least several years. “Health freedom” and “medical freedom” have always been code words for dismantling public health infrastructure, anything resembling a vaccine mandate (even in schools), and dismantling the FDA.
- Same strategy as "School Choice" or "Parent's Rights", the first was created to suck money out of the public school infrastructure and put an end to quality free public schooling, the second to basically make children property again.
- Yeah, many are against only COVID because it’s gotten all the attention. But whatever leaps in logic, conspiracy theories, and blog-eurekas have them being against the COVID vaccine will apply to all the others as well. There are people in my family who don’t get their flu shot for the same reasons as the COVID one.

What religions are against vaccines??
- I don't recall any of the major accepted religions saying that anything like a vaccine is bad. But these are the types of people who will probably use religion as a way to get out of anything they don't like or they think it challenges "God's plan", even if it lets them live longer.
  
  Yeah but this is exactly the kind of thing that should be rejected as it is not "a sincerely held religious belief". You can't claim it's a religious belief when your religion does not hold that belief, only you do.
- Christ Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses are the only two I can think of that might, and even them I'm not sure about.
  
  Christian Scientists are indeed against them. Jehovahs do vaccinations but not blood transfusions.
  Blood transfusions honestly are not a problem most of the time, though. I’ve heard many stories about doctors just overriding the parents wishes due to emergency and the parents generally sigh with relief.
- Republicanism
  
  https://www.psypost.org/2021/08/conspiracy-theorists-and-religious-people-are-more-likely-to-commit-a-conjunction-fallacy-in-contexts-related-to-their-worldviews-61675
- None.
  Its cherry picking what suits their argument in the moment.
  Same reason they'd get offended and file criminal complaints if you throw stones at them for wearing mixed fiber clothing.

Get me out of this godforsaken shithole country.
Why are our least educated people trying to act like they know things about stuff? Who empowered these ass clowns?
- I say fight to make it a better place.
  But if you really want to leave, it’s honestly not that hard. Start a go fund me page, it might not get you everything you need, but put that money away and then do another one. Crowd source your exit plan. Keep doing it until you have the needed money. Might it take a few years? Yes.
- It is the well educated.doing this. The religious fundamentalists in Mississippi never went on the antIvax train as they know their scriptures well enough to know it isn't there. However a few well.educated who don't know their scriptures there are enough to being this to court againt the majority.
  
  It couldn't be the well-educated doing this. Because then they wouldn't be well educated. It could be the well to do sadistic and manipulative people. Who get their kicks out of manipulating and riiling up ignorant people to vote against their own interests. But in a Venn diagram they would have little to no overlap with highly educated people in general.
  
  Mississippi had the lowest rate of covid vaccination in the country, the hell are you talking about.

We want the freedom to have our own day in medical practice performed on our bodies!
But also ban all abortion care and all HRT and send people to prison for disagreeing!

We were real close to eradicating the measles virus worldwide. Then this stuff happened.
- We almost got polio now, though, so some progress:
  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03602-5

Parents with autoimmune children will teach their children to take more precautions in life but with a stronger sense of love. Republican Parents will kill their children and their bloodline.
If Republicans are so hellbent on Killing Children let's at least look at the bright side and note it'll only last a generation or two.
- Bullshit, and this is the same fucked up defeatist logic people used to avoid a covid vaccine mandate.
  Anti-vaxxers are not just hurting themselves, and they are not hurting themselves more than the rest of us, and they are not hurting themselves anywhere close to fast enough to kill themselves off. If you were right, this wouldn't be a problem at all. Anti-vaxxers don't die at a high enough rate to counter the spread of their stupidity. Covid, Pertussis, Measles, Mumps, Rubella, these diseases kill the sick, the elderly, the young, and the immunocompromised. The people who suffer most are the ones who would get vaccines if they could. It's dangerous to act like they are hurting themselves.
  
  This should be the top comment

Parahprasing greatly here, but in her recent book, Naomi Klein pointed out that most Americans are pilled as fuck on neoliberalism, and because the pandemic is a naturally occurring and obvious contradiction to its fundamental tenets (individualism, meritocracy, competiton, etc.), the only way to square that circle was to go insane.
I find that framework very useful. These so called activists are pilled as hell on this fundamentally individualist concept of freedom that inundates us Americans from birth. It's an almost entirely empty conception of freedom. Basically, we can say whatever we want while owning guns and generally being selfish. No one is entitled to be free of childhood disease though. That's not freedom because it encroaches on others being selfish. If you genuinely believe in individual liberty above all, as Americans are taught from birth, then childhood vaccinations are wrong.
Unfortunately it's a really fucking stupid way to run a society.
- I think it's much more than that.
  For example people also pretend the mode of transportation requiring licensing, regular checkups, a rigorous following of additional rules and the requirement to constantly display your identification is somehow the epitome of personal freedom.
  So I'm pretty sure it's not just "going insane" as the reality contradicts their believe. There is also a fuck-ton of ~~brain-washing~~ lobbying/advertising involved to influence people to move into certain directions. The move to resist vaccination simply isn't natural in the US (it certainly wasn't in the past), unless for a very small group of people. Then is was coopted and inflated as just another front of a cultural war to divide and polarize people.
  
  That’s a sobering thought regarding the strict regulation of private transportation, and how much more access and discriminatory power it gives the police.
- I generally agree with you except I'm on the other side. I would usually pick the freedom side of a freedom/safety trade-off, with "freedom" defined as freedom from having anyone else tell me what to do, not freedom from disease. I support the general principle that a person should not be compelled to undergo a medical procedure for the benefit of others.
  With that said, mandatory vaccinations really are pushing the boundaries of my libertarianism. They're good for the individual rather than a sacrifice simply for the sake of others, and having the large majority of people vaccinated has major advantages for everyone. I'd put them in the same category as fire departments (and I'm vaccinated myself) but because I get where the vaccine opponents are coming from, I agree with letting them opt out if they go through all the paperwork. That has most of the benefits of universally mandatory vaccination but without having to force anyone who really, really doesn't want to for whatever reason.
  (I suppose there's a libertarian argument to be made in favor of personal liability for spreading disease. If you infect me with covid, I should be able to sue you for damages just as if you negligently caused me bodily harm via other means. Of course that's entirely impractical.)
  
  The impracticality of holding somebody liable for things they put into the air that hurt you also sounds a lot like our big polluting corporations.
  It’s funny how many conservative opinions require a leap to “this problem doesn’t exist anyway.”
  
  I support the general principle that a person should not be compelled to undergo a medical procedure for the benefit of others.
  Get the fuck out of my society then
  
  I support the general principle that a person should not be compelled to undergo a medical procedure for the benefit of others.
  If vaccinations only protected the person being vaccinated and didn't protect anyone else, I'd say "let people decide whether or not to be vaccinated."! It would still be the better idea to vaccinate, but I'd be fine (in that theoretical world) with them choosing not to vaccinate.
  However, I also believe that your right to swing your fist ends at my face. People don't have the right to do things that actively hurt others. Not getting vaccinated means that you can transmit highly infectious and deadly diseases. Deciding not to vaccinate could mean that a person is deciding that other people will die.
  Apart from valid medical reasons (e.g. autoimmune disorders or allergic reactions to vaccine components), people shouldn't be able to opt out. In a society, we often curb the individual liberties to protect people. I'm not free to decide to drive drunk and it's not because I could hurt myself by doing so. If I drove drunk, I could hurt other people and so it's illegal.
  Civil suits could be the answer, except it's nearly impossible to prove that Timmy got measles when he passed by Jane in aisle B31 of Target. The level of contact tracing that would be required to absolutely prove this would be orders of magnitude more invasive than vaccines.
  We shouldn't allow "personal freedom" to skip vaccinations with the trade-off being other people's lives.

I was on one of the vaccine trials. Had a cab driver on the way back from one of my checkups go on a COVID rant. It was awkward after I told him why I was there. Lmao. I'd do it again, felt great being protected asap, plus money.

The first concept of vaccination was invented in 1796. It was an unknown idea before this. Which religion has an opinion on this and how exactly does that work when there was no concept of the thing in question when any of these religions were formed? It's such utter bullshit on its face. There's no grounds for this. It's made up crap on top of made up crap, as a grounds to shirk a simple procedure that saves lives.
But, also, this headline is dumb. Religious medical freedom advocates have been about this for ages. The only thing new is they got one dumb judge to make a bad ruling.
- I don't have any evidence for this but it seems like the vaccine pushback is at least partially a desire to avoid responsibility. If they choose to vaccinate and their kid is in the 0.000001% who experience adverse effects then it would be their fault the kid was hurt but if they don't vaccinate and their kid just happens to die of measles or whatever then it was all part of god's plan and they didn't do anything wrong.
  
  That's like being worried about food poisoning, so not feeding their kid. The parents didn't do anything to make the kid malnourished, but if they fed the kid something that made them sick, they would be at fault.
  But that's not true. If their kid dies of malnourishment, it would still be the parents' fault, because the parents are responsible for the kid's health and safety.
  What backward thinking. This isn't the trolley problem.
- The headline is agit-prop, letting an extremist group label themselves with some misleading name like "Medical Freedom" is as bad ad repeating the "Death Tax" or "School Freedom" talking points, which is how we lost the estate tax and quality free public schools.
- Religion says not to alter or mutilate your body. That's why very religious people might skip getting earrings or tattoos too.
  Edit: A vaccine is, by definition, artificially altering your immune system response.
  
  A vaccine isn't going to alter your immune system response anymore than digging in the garden might. Honestly, digging in the garden or eating some fresh fruit/vegetables/cheese will probably expose you to more foreign genetic material, virii and microbes than a vaccine ever would, thereby altering your immune response to a much greater degree. It's ignorant made up reasoning loosely based on ignorant made up useless meandering out dated philosophies.
  The immune system is a learned response system. It's trained by exposure. That's the way it works. The specific way it is introduced to foreign material doesn't matter, except that certain ways are more likely to allow an infection to take hold.
  You know what can really alter and possibly mutilate a body? A serious infection.
  Edit to add:
  Going to the gym or just exercising alters the body by making it stronger, adding muscle, but have never heard a religious person say that is taboo because that would be ridiculous. Vaccines make your immune system stronger in much the same fashion, through use and training. There's absolutely no good argument against them.

God, I hate these cretins.
- I’m just tired of my life being affected by fictional belief systems

God, I miss the 70s when everyone got their shots at school and anyone who ran out of line was called a pussy and was dragged back to get their shots so they didn't kill grandparents and babies.
When did we become so weak and scared? These idiots are gonna be the ones that bring back polio and measles.

Hey, fundamentalist smoothbrains, since "thinking" isn't something you all like to do all that often, let me translate your pseudo biblical gibberish into plain English:
"I'd rather have some young person who had to fight for their life already loose that fight than allow my healthy child to get a little pinch and feel kind of down for three days"
"I'd rather have another parent stand at the grave of their little joy than allow my child to have a little ouchie on an arm"
"I'd rather cite Christianity as the reason why I act in a way Jesus would have turned away in disgust from than be a Christian and care for the most defenseless, helpless in our society this one little bit"
- I really hope that the widespread cold disregard for other humans is something academics study in disbelief in the future, and not our downfall.

We may not see many repercussions from this now, but when the unvaccinated grow up and the viruses have had a generation's worth of time to spread - just wait till a pregnant woman gets mumps and has a profoundly deaf baby. Or their toddler gets polio and ends up spending potentially years in a hospital, only to be released with lifetime disabilities. I know 2 people with polio, and one who is deaf due their mother having mumps (pre-vaccine days). Their lives, and the lives of their families, was/is hard. I wonder what grandma and grampa, safely vaccinated, will say when their grandkids start falling ill.

The people of "the party of pro-life", trying to spread plague.
You can't make this shit up.

There should be a mandatory vaccination against stupidity.

I luckily (for many reasons) don't live in MS, but what if I don't want to subject my kid to a miasma of germs from these plague rats? Where's my freedom?

Not a new target for them

Awesome! Bringing back Polio to own the Libs...

"Medical Freedom" activists won't look so tough when you cough on their unvaccinated hellspawn and 5 days later they're grieving their death.
- "All part of God's plan"

Stupid is as stupid does

COVID regulations and handling did not help, at least from what social and regular media made it out to be.
Some things to consider that I hear from people that are vaccinated but have became more criticial after COVID:
It made many question the scientists working for these big pharma companies, where profit always comes first.
While the people (as in 'we the people') pay for the research/loss and the companies take the profits, while having full immunity.
Scientists can also be like politicians, saying what they think people want to hear, without addressing the serious concerns people have; lying and moving goalposts does not help.
Many on the left used to be more sceptical of what gov't, 3 letter agancies, and media had to say; now known as classic liberals.
- It made many question the scientists working for these big pharma companies, where profit always comes first.
  A lot of scientist don't work for those companies, or even worse they work for the competition. That's why constant review of scientific facts and finding a consensus is the way it works.
  Scientists can also be like politicians, saying what they think people want to hear, without addressing the serious concerns people have; lying and moving goalposts does not help.
  That's a media problem, not a scientific one. If there are 10000 scientists agreeing on something and one with the opposite opinion, you will see 2 scientists debating the issue. This pretends there is an actual debate going on and not just one nutjob saying bullshit for what ever reason (might be honest believe, might be money, doesn't matter...).
  While the people (as in ‘we the people’) pay for the research/loss and the companies take the profits, while having full immunity.
  That is true, even more so in the very commercialized US health idustry. Yet that's far less true for vaccines than for any other medicine. Or how much did you actually pay to get vaccinated? And how much did the government (which spends your tax money) pay for each dose? They surely did a phenomenally better job at negotiating costs there than what your insurance companies or you yourself are able to do...
  
  Yes, I shall keep trying to learn while trying to get out of bubbles, which is hard to do.
  Thank you for explaining a different point of view while in a manner that is easy to understand!

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