I dunno.
There is a collective benefit in having children vaccinated, or appears to be. Generally, epidemics can be prevented in this way.
I can also see why parents wouldn't want the state intruding in decisions about their children.
So this is a case of overlapping rights and freedoms, of the sort we discover everywhere. So it isn't unreasonable for folks to stake out different positions, in my opinion.
A few other considerations.
As soon as you have a mandate of this sort, businesses will use it forcefully to deploy their own vaccines. Sometimes this will mean children are used as guinea pigs in a population-wide programme. And many parents don't wish their children to be part of such a programme. Lest we forget, there was a medically-approved drug called thalidomide which damaged many people five or six decades ago. So caution isn't simply ignorance on the part of non-medical people.
I believe the medical need for popular vaccination is largely satisfied when about 95% of everyone is vaccinated. At least usually. Not being a doctor, I could be wrong. But if so, this would allow some room for exemptions/ freedoms. If so, conforming to a 95% threshold would gentle any mandate.
At any rate, I see large-scale vaccination as likely to be generally beneficial, so long as the path to general vaccination has been properly tested on smaller groups of increasing size, but I am not outraged when some parents see things differently.
| 