Vaccinations: Being Held Responsible for Irresponsibility – A Case for No Legal Immunity

Ok, you’re free to choose to not get an H1N1 vaccination. At least as long as the Swine flu does not evolve into a highly fatal plague that would actually threaten the continuity and existence of our very nation. You know, that point when everyone who doesn’t want it would be willing to kill everyone else if they got in the way of them getting the vaccine. But that is the most extreme case. Under that circumstance, no one would be looking to figure out how to protect the rights of everyone else from the folks who decided to not get the vaccine. After all, most of them would be dead; or those few who are not would be lucky Darwinian survivors, who might possess useful genetic traits that can be harnessed to protect the public in the future.

But what about a mid-way scenario, a circumstance in which everyone who would want to be vaccinated is not able to because there is just not enough supply. This could be a transient condition, where eventually the supply will come to meet the needs of anyone who wants it; and where those in need haven’t yet succumb to the disease. In this case, there are individuals who will contract the flu from others, and as likely or not and most probably from the very group of individuals who choose not to be vaccinated. If you are one of these flu-stricken individuals who is sickened and even killed because of the inaction of others; don’t you or your survivors have a legitimate claim against the people who contributed to the spread of the infection? After all, if I knowingly spread the AIDS virus to other, isn’t there case law that says that I am guilty of attempted murder? How is contributing to the spread of the H1N1 flu not an analogous action? Why aren’t non-vaccinated by choice individuals culpable of their decisions.

If you don’t get vaccinated and through that decision you effectively allow yourself to become another carrier of the H1N1 flu when you become infected, then why don’t you have a responsibility to the consequences of that decision?

You can claim that there is no way to show a direct link between their decision and my contracting the flu. And let’s face it, there isn’t. But it is also true that the H1N1 flu cannot spread without hosts that carry and disseminate the virus. By not vaccinating, these individuals become the very vectors that propagate the disease to others. Thus the very fact that the disease is spreading is proof that individuals who are not protected are spreading it to others, and they are doing so at a multiplicative rate. One of them spreads to flu to two, three or even dozens of others in the population. And were it not for those who are getting vaccinated, the virus would be spreading even more rapidly throughout the populace. Your guilt is because you actively supported the spread of the flu; and you are therefore responsible for the impact that the disease has upon people who were placed at risk because of those actions.

In a free society where you have the right to decide to be vaccinated or to not be, you should also have the responsibility to account for your choice and to be held liable for it. The important question is what are the consequences to you for having placed others at risk? Today, there are no consequences imposed by our social system.

But if your son or daughter, your husband or wife, your brother or sister, or your friends and neighbors were harmed or killed by such actions; would you find people who promote and advise others to not be vaccinated completely free of responsibility? Would you think it was their right to contribute to this result?

I am sure of my position which is: if you demand the protection of your rights and freedoms from our society that you are also responsible and required to protect that system, and that you will be held accountable for failure to do so.

Voting on Vaccinations: Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down. It’s Your Life

CBS’s 60 Minutes did a segment on H1N1 flu and the vaccine. The segment extended the coverage they had done previously, and was one of their traditional follow-up stories providing an update on the Arkansas boy (Luke Duvall) who had come down with the flu. In their story, CBS brings up the issue that about 40% of the population has indicated that they won’t get the vaccine even if it is available to them. Public Health officials, of course, express their concerns that these people are placing themselves at risk by not availing themselves of the protection the H1N1 vaccine will offer them.

What is being overlooked here is a great scientific and medical research opportunity; and I would suggest an intelligence test as well. Consider the following: we are at a point where the Government could institute a program to enable each citizen to opt-in or opt-out of the vaccine program. It would be similar to programs that many school systems have begun to employ with regard to vaccination efforts. Children are being required to obtain their parents’ consent before the school allows them to be vaccinated at school. Some local school efforts have been mentioned on the news in my area and the news reporters seem a little surprised that a large proportion of the parents have refused to give their permission.

I am not going to spend a lot of time pointing out that the reporters have not looked into a very interesting possibility with respect to these schools’ approach to their vaccination programs. After all, how many of the children, who did not return a signed parent’s permission slip did so because the child did not ask the parent to even decide. Not that any child might not have wanted to get a shot or that they just forgot.

But the schools’ have illuminated a process that any of the various Government agencies could leverage as a means to create a grand experiment. We could set up an Opt-In or Opt-Out H1N1 vaccination program. Given the current limitations with supplies this would even help in focusing the need for the vaccine into areas that are seeking it and to avoid distributing the vaccine to locations where the need is not as great. The program would be very simple; if you want the Vaccine for H1N1 you can register for eligibility – Opting-In. A web-site could be set up to make this registration easy and readily accessible. And for anyone who doesn’t have access to a computer, registration at doctor’s offices, pharmacies, public health office and other public centers could be offered. Not only could individuals register to be eligible to be vaccinated, they could register to not be eligible – Opting-Out. Parents could obviously register their children according to their preferences.

Now come the tricky part. If you register to Opt-Out and then later change you mind, you have to wait until the people who Opted-In to receive their vaccines before you would be able to get vaccinated when supplies are no longer limited. It is not clear that the Government would be able to not allow you to not change your mind and prevent you from getting vaccinated. This would be ideal from an experimental perspective, but it would be difficult to keep the lawyers from trying to sue everyone they could think of when an Opting-Out individual dies or is seriously impaired from the flu. Some family member will then insist that it was the Government’s responsibility to give them access to the vaccine.

With such a self-directed Vaccination choice program, the Government would be able to collect an enormous amount of data about the consequences to the different groups from their decisions. This experiment would help the Government assess the efficacy of their H1N1 flu information dissemination efforts. It would provide an insight to different social groups with regard to their decision making on matters from health care to other social issues. It would even allow the public to determine the impact their personal choices can have and in the significance that the religious, political, and social leaders that they are placing their trust in.

It could be a grand experiment. How many more people from what groups lived or died because of their choices. It would even provide proof for how efficiently diseases are spread in populations that are composed of mixed vaccinated and un-vaccinated groups. It would be a great waste of data and understanding to be gained from a situation that is going to be taking place anyway. Why not use this opportunity to learn and help our society in the future. It will also be a more definitive teaching lesson if we have the data to show people that there are real consequences to such decisions. And isn’t it the obligation of the Government, the health care system and the public itself to help insure that we are provided with the best information possible in matters of life and death?