General News Teen who refused chickenpox vaccine says school is limiting his activities. So he's suing

Yeah, sorry, got no sympathy for this kid. The school's got to protect the interests of ALL their students, not just him. And if keeping a kid who might carry a contagious disease OUT of the school and out of extracurriculars is in the best interest of all of their students, tough shit for him. Get fucking vaccinated. Your personal religious beliefs should never be allowed to put others at risk, period.

 

And what about the rights of others not to be infected? Sorry boyo,not this time

 

I do find this one a little strange. I am 100% for vaccines and kid being vaccinated but we do NOT take shots against chicken pox where I am from. It's expected people will catch it as kids and in fact parents acctually try and make it happen so it's out of the way as chicken pox is only dangerous if you are an adult.

So I do find it strange that he is pretty much discriminated against for refusing a non-mandatory vaccine in many countries.

 

I guess it's more like the principle behind it. There is already a (surprisingly) large distrust of vaccines, which is why we are having measles outbreaks in this day and age. Letting things like this slide might just give those anti vaxxers more fuel for their destructive cause.

 

If they were to let him win this suit he best be prepared for all the suits against him from parents of infected kids, or adults themselves. Some people, myself included, would call going to school like that reckless endangerment. He better be careful and think about the consequences if he wins and attends and people get sick. The tables can quickly be turned.

 

It doesn’t matter if it’s not mandatory in other countries. It’s mandatory in the US, plain and simple. He needs to get it done or he can’t participate.

Chicken pox can be dangerous to a child if they’re immuno-suppressed and avoiding chicken pox as a child means avoiding the chance of shingles as an adult which is pretty much good all around.

 

Since when did this kid become a theologian? Most Catholics have no qualms about vacinations. It is sinful for this student to neglect his health and put himself at risk. Having suffered through both chicken pox and shingles, I can attest that it is painful, disfiguring and possibly fatal. It is shameful that he uses "religious" beliefs to sue. It may be that monetary gain is what is driving this, not religion.

 

I hope the judge sides with the school.

Want to hear a funny story from the onion?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...d-because-it-s-my-right-to-dec-1819584945/amp

 

My point isn't that he shouldn't follow the law but that the US seem to have a tendency to over vaccine for illnesses that are deemed pretty much harmless by most countries if you are not immuno-compromised (which puts you at risk of dying from ANY illness anyway!), I don't think we should aim to create vaccines for every little illness as it's now been proven that it leads to superviruses that are way more likely to cause harm and kill immuno-deficient people (and the ones who aren't).

I currently live in the US and had to have a flu shot (also not a thing where I am from), I find it ridiculous. Yes the flu can kill but a cold can also kill someone who is old and/or immuno-compromised. I complied with the flu shot but it DID make me feel uncomfortable to inject myself with a product that wasn't actively needed as I personally prefer to let my body develop it's own immunity whenever available (same way I only take antibiotics when I REALLY am in agonizing pain) as well as potentially avoid life-long side effect from a vacune that's been created under US standards that are often very different (and much more lax) than European standards.

I am talking as someone who has had both the flu and chicken pox and while it wasn't fun, having chicken pox as a kid means I am immunized against it without having had to inject myself with anything same with the flu, I haven't had the flu since I first had it and while the flu doesn't work like chicken pox my body obviously has developped a certain immunity to it. (I work with children so around the flu quite a lot!)
Ironically the only person I know who didn't have the flu as a kid and ended up with it as an adult is an American who had the shot against it as a kid, he almost died from it and I think having a shot (which obviously lost its power after a while) was more harmful to him than letting him catch it as a kid where it would have been almost certainly been harmless for him.


So while I am not religious and 100% pro vaccination, I would also be warry of a country who is so keen to vaccinate for things other (leading) countries don't see a benefit in vacuning against.

 

Flu shot is a weird example because it's...not required. Recommended, yes, but not mandatory for...most things, as far as I'm aware. They have free clinics on my campus all the time but I always choose not to go. I haven't gotten the flu and I just don't want an extra shot. Only time I think I got one was during the Swine Flu scare and my district made it mandatory since pretty much everyone was getting sick in my district. The majority of my 60+ kids that I teach have been out at some point in the past month for the flu, so has my dad, the next door teacher, and the teacher I work with...and I haven't gotten anything. I mean, yeah, a flu shot is a vaccine, just a weird example to use since most places don't really consider it mandatory.

Chickenpox though? The biggest benefit is avoiding it all together. Sure, if you get chickenpox as a kid you're once and done...but then you're susceptible to shingles as an adult, which is even more painful. Chickenpox vaccine? No chickenpox, no shingles, little worry.

It's also a dangerous argument to use because technically most everything we vaccinate against, you get it once and if you survive...you can be good. The problem is that everything affects everyone differently. Chickenpox is mostly seen as minor, but it can kill, just depends on how it affects the person. Why not just vaccinate against it as a kid and literally just not have to worry about whatsoever?

Also, you keep using Europe as examples but:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47536981
Italy now requires the chickenpox vaccines for students to attend school.

 

Flu isn't legally mandatory but it was required by my job which I found frustrating (though I did comply).

The risk of getting shingles as an adult is at best 10% if you haven't been vaccinated and again, while painful shingles isn't naturally deadly. Which means, people are keen to inject a product into their body (risking long-term complications) to protect themselves against something they only had 10% of catching in the first place and that maybe had about a 1% of chance of causing them lifelong damage or to be life-threatening. It just seems like over medicating to me.

Old people die from a simple cold as do some cancer patients, it's absolutely awful but I genuinely don't think we should start creating vaccines for the most simple diseases. It would be nice to live in an illness-free world but in the meantime I think it's better to build up our own immune system through "small"/ "harmless"(for most) diseases than being faced with a bigger illness with an immune system that has never learned how to fight a simple cold due to over medicating.

Again in this specific case, school is abiding by its rules but yeah.

 

Do you think it should be a regulation to get your kids vaccinated?

 

My mom tried to get me and my brother sick with chicken pox when we were kids. Our next door neighbor was starting to break, I think, so my mom had us go play with her. This was over the summer and since we were out of school and my mom was a teacher, she thought it would be convenient timing. It didn't work, though, and we got chicken pox a couple years later.

 

When a person is putting other people at risk, you regulate what that person can do and where they go. Its the same with this. I dont think i have ever got a chicken pox vaccine from a school, however i did for other things. From what i know, you get it as a baby/child or at least thats what happened with me. its horrible anti-vax (pro disease as i like to call them) are so loud now. really scary when measles is coming up in some US states when it was potentially almost eradicated with the invention of its vaccine. hes stupid for suing a school for trying to protect its students.

 

I agree about letting our immune systems take care of "simple" things. I have had the flu several times (just very common where I live, and I used to work around sick people) but every time the next season came around, I managed substantially better than people who took a yearly vaccine. A vaccine like that tries to predict the strain of flu that scientists think will evolve for that year. It is not fool proof. I can see that more "at risk" people might consider it, but my point is that I agree about "over vaccinating."

In the US, every little medical thing is micro managed. In the long run, I think it will cause more harm than good. Just look at antibiotics for example. They are so overused, that there is a bit of a crisis, because there is nothing really effective to treat the "big" stuff when it develops. Anyway, I am going off topic: If a school requires a vaccine, then there is nothing you can do about it but comply, because those are the rules of the institution.

However, I personally believe that the less vaccines you need, the better. People constantly talk about evolution. Well, how do you think natural selection works? Early humans would have needed to be able to build immunity to certain viruses, etc. in order to have survived to this day. Not rely on (non existent) vaccines. That is part of the evolutionary process. Something to mull over.

This is my personal opinion, so sorry if it rubs anyone the wrong way. I just happen to see that the US is a little too excited about pumping our bodies full of pharmaceutical products, when a closely evaluated case by case basis should be used. Not a generalized process.

Oh, and I think it is quite un-Christian to be suing someone/an entity. It also looks like an attention gimmick more than anything else. And I personally am not against religion.

I believe I am rambling, and moving off point so I will stop here.

 

I wasn’t aware there was a vaccine for chickenpox everyone I knew got it at some point. I got it at two. I was the only one of my friends who could go to the kids who got it around 5-6 because I’d already had it. I have never heard of vaccines being created from aborted fetuses. I think people who are against vaccines are insane. I don’t get why this kid would rather sue his school than get a vaccine, I also don’t get is it him or his dad the one causing trouble.

 

This is true, but vaccines are part of the reason we no longer have to worry about preventable diseases taking millions of lives. Yes, they built up immunity but early human mortality wasn't high and when you got sick it was either: you get better or you die. We like to try and prevent people from dying so...vaccinate.

I'll also direct you to graveyards from early America even. No vaccines, so families would literally have a lot of kids with the hope that maybe half would survive to adulthood. You can see gravestones of children in the same family with the same name because their parents wanted the name to live on. It was a messed up time. Because of vaccines, we literally don't have to worry about that on a mass scale anymore.

 

@Chierro

Thank you for your reply.

I won't refute what you are saying about mortality and the past. It is true. I'm just trying to illustrate (pretty badly - and perhaps too brutally) that vaccine/antibiotic reliance may actually become a problem because both viruses and bacteria mutate over time. Look at the Swine Flu scare and Mrsa. Such variations could *possibly* lead to the same mortality problems in the future. Never getting sick is not doing your immune system any good (not in a "healthy" person anyway). I do acknowledge that there are people who absolutely need vaccines, because even a cold can be fatal. And there are plenty of simple vaccines that are invaluable, such as the one for tetanus. But I know this is getting off topic from the original post. I was mostly chiming in with the flu shot discussion. Overall, I just want people to know that science isn't full proof.