Mandatory vaccination - before its too late.

You trust and respect the medical and scientific community; and their clear ruling is that full vaccination on the prescribed schedule is the best and safest option for the individual and society. Let's assume that's true.

Now what?

We've established it's a good thing; but some people don't agree.
What should we do about those people?
They clearly lack our reasoning skills and simply refuse to get themselves and their children vaccinated, no matter how compelling our arguments.
We have to make it mandatory, right?
If it was just their own health on the line, we wouldn't have a problem; but we have a problem because we have a society and we need that herd immunity to protect the vulnerable.

There's only one problem and its a big one, so it gets big letters.

People who don't share your priorities react to incentives differently than you would.

You trust and respect the establishment; so you do what you're told.
When it's mandatory you do it.
This might have lead you to assume that people who don't trust and respect the people in charge will also do what they're told; that the only thing standing between society, and the safe-harbour of herd immunity, is convincing those people in charge to make it mandatory.
That making a thing mandatory is the same as making it happen.

Have you heard the term, Shoot, shovel and shutup?

Environmentalists sometimes secure legal protection for an endangered animal, meaning the animals and their habitats need to be left undisturbed indefinitely wherever they're found; even if they're on otherwise productive farmland.
The champions of these rules have the well-being of the animals as their highest priority.
Looking after endangered animals is good, so making it mandatory is just making sure the other people do the good thing.

After the rules arrive, and often while they're still being discussed, there tends to be a fairly drastic reduction in sightings of the animals.
Many of them are never seen again, at least not on paper.
The farmer is heavily invested in his farm, and as much as he'd like to look after the animals, he can't risk having them found on his land; as the legislation would limit his use of it, including his ability to sell it as useful land; forever.
Anecdotally rules of this nature inspire a widespread culling campaign, where potentially affected farmers co-operate to eradicate any trace of potentially protected animals from the area.
Shoot, shovel and shut up.

In the absence of rules, farmers will spot a rare looking animal and call it in.
They're happy to pass along relevant, timely, accurate information because they know they won't be punished for it.
We currently enjoy the same level of co-operation from those unwilling to vaccinate.
They fill out the conscientious objection paperwork, and give us an accurate and therefore valuable indication of who is vaccinated and who isn't; but the first victim of war is the truth, and mandating that somebody undergo a medical procedure against their will is a declaration of war.

It might not feel like a war, but that's because you're not on the front lines.
The medical professionals; the ones you have all that respect for; they'd be the ones in the trenches. Doctors and nurses didn't study all those years just to be conscripted as foot soldiers and surveillance agents for the state; but that's what they'd become.

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Sign off on the vaccination or I'll come back and burn this place to the ground.

Here's $500 to squirt that stuff in the sink and sign the paperwork.

Tick the box or I'll say I caught you fondling my little boy.

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This might sound outlandish. Goodness knows, you wouldn't dream of hacking into a database, fabricating paperwork claiming to have been vaccinated while overseas, getting a plant hired as a receptionist or renting a junkie's baby as a ringer, but remember.

People who don't share your priorities react to incentives differently than you would.

They'll do whatever it takes to avoid that needle; and they won't feel guilty about it; since they'll consider it self defense. Are you sure you want to do that to doctors?
There are thousands of parents out there already, who blame a vaccine for their child's chronic health problem; and hate themselves for choosing to vaccinate.
Where will that rage be directed when that choice is taken away?
It's not like they can just go to a different doctor.
Any move to make vaccination mandatory will have to also limit doctor shopping, to stop parents from hopping from one doctor to another until they find one they can threaten or bribe into fabricating the paperwork.
Imagine a couple who blame their oldest child's crippling illness on the mandatory vaccinations administered by their family doctor; sitting opposite the same doctor, giving their second child the same shot, so child services don't take the baby into permanent foster care, (where they'll get the shot anyway.)
Do you think that's the kind of working environment the doctor signed up for?

The real insidious part of all this is the long term fallout; and there's no shortage of that.
At first a mandatory vaccination program would appear highly effective.
On paper, the rates of vaccination would increase, and even approach 100%
Anyone assessing the program would no doubt declare it a success and move on to the next project.

Our records show every Yellow-banded-skink habitat is now protected; pop the champagne. (Lucky we did it too, there were far fewer skinks than we projected)

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Then the questions would start.

So why are people still getting these diseases?
Why are doctors struggling to accurately diagnose illnesses when relying on patient's records?
How can you claim vaccination is effective when we're all vaccinated against measles but keep getting these epidemics?

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The safety and efficacy of vaccines may be backed by science, but you can't do good science with bad data; and once that data is contaminated there's no way to know how thoroughly compromised it is, or to replace what you're missing.
Not only would we lose track of how many people are vaccinated, we'd lose track of how many people there are.
Vaccine hesitant expectant parents would opt to have undocumented babies; encouraging a whole ecosystem of doulas and midwives to provide underground birthing services.

Children who currently enjoy almost all of the benefits of our healthcare system would receive none of them, and that can't be good for herd immunity.

It might be comforting to write this off as hyperbole; but between tracking/privacy and mandatory schooling concerns, many couples wouldn't need much more justification to take the whole family off-grid, and these are people already willing to risk having their children contract any number of preventable diseases to avoid those jabs.

No records collected after serious discussion of mandatory vaccination starts can be considered accurate; and we're getting dangerously close to seriously discussing mandatory vaccination.
People will start to adopt some of these countermeasures even before any legislation has passed; so think very carefully about what you advocate, before its too late.
Intentions aren't outcomes; and people who don't share your priorities react to incentives differently than you would.

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Have a great day.