Vaccine exemptions and herd immunity

There was a good piece a while ago on some of the legal issues around mandating vaccines for school children on Science Based Medicine. Basically it lays out that for religious exemptions to be valid they must be broad enough to include any philosophical exemption so as to not be in violation of the establishment clause by giving a religious group an unfair privilege. It is legal for states to mandate that everybody has to get vaccinated because its a serious public safety concern.

Even if you remove concerns about the health and welfare of the child who’s parents are irresponsible enough to refuse their children vaccines for some horrible religious or philosophical reason, the issue is herd immunity. Friendly Atheist has a post with an excerpt from an article in the New York Times written by a man named Steven Weinreb who suffers from chronic lymphocytic leukemia. He just went through a allogenetic stem-cell transplant which has left him with the immune function of a newborn. That’s right, his immune system has to start from ground one. If he gets sick, it quiet literally could kill him.

One reason that a lot of people skip the flu shot is that they are healthy individuals who would easily fight of an influenza infection in a few days with relatively minor symptoms and would have antibodies that would protect them from similar more deadly strains later. However, the problem here is that they are putting people at risk who can’t get the vaccine either because they are too young, not healthy enough, or have an allergy or some other contraindication when it comes to the vaccine. If you’re health and eligible for the vaccine you had a choice, but you might get it and spread it to somebody who didn’t have that choice.

Then there’s people like Steven Weinreb; cancer patients who’s immune systems have been all but wipped out by radiation and/or chemo therapy; people suffering from chronic immunodeficiency syndromes like Common variable Immunodeficiency (CvID, a genetic condition that is only treatable with intravenous immunoglobulins [IVIG] derived from source plasma donation) or AIDS; and those on immunosuppressants to treat conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, or allergic reactions. These are people who even with the vaccines are virtually helpless to fight off infections. They need your immunity to keep their exposure risk as low as possible because without a well functioning immune system even the most mild strain of influenza can be fatal.

Out of concern for those who can’t get vaccinated and those with a compromised immune system everybody has a very serious ethical obligation to get vaccinated. Schools have a serious enough obligation to ensure that their weakest students (quite literally) don’t get seriously ill, that I think that those who are not current on all of their vaccines (including the flu shot) for any reason other than a medical contraindication shouldn’t be allowed within 200 yards of a school, whether it’s a irresponsible adult or their unfortunate children, that’s right, treat them like the dangerous menace they are.

If you don’t care if you get sick, I have to break it to you that it’s not all about you, you might be able to fight it off with no complications, but you could also spread it to someone it can kill. So go get your goddamn shots.