Vaccinate or Jail?

Parents in Maryland were threatened with jail time on Saturday if they didn't vaccinate their children. On the spot. That's right, nurses with needles were lined up and waiting... and so were police officers.

No, I'm not kidding.

I know I've already made my views on vaccinations pretty clear, but this just really goes too far. Last time I checked, personal freedom was a liberty we still enjoyed in America. Or... we're supposed to. Did someone invent time travel when I wasn't looking? Is this American 2007? Or Big Brother 1984? Perhaps Moscow 1930?

Apparently, immunization paperwork is more important to the police state of Maryland than the paper the Bill of Rights or the Constitution are printed on. Because that's what this is about. Paperwork. A bureacracy gone mad.

Maryland schools claim they've "sent notices" to parents, mostly of middle-schoolers who haven't received their hepatitis-B and chicken pox boosters (two of the most questionably mandated shots in the entire vaccine schedule, I might add) who haven't turned in their paperwork saying that 1) their child has been vaccinated or 2) they wish to waive the vaccination.

Come to find out that many of these parents had turned in their paperwork. Several times. The school, however, "misplaced" it. Oops. Sorry about that. Off to jail with you, school officials--do not pass go, do not collect $200. What? You're not sending them to jail for their paperwork error? Oh, but you're willing to threaten parents with jail time for not turning in paperwork they actually did turn in?

Filing that under "things that make you go hmmmmm..."

Oh, and get this. I love this. Many of these kids waited in line on Saturday to get a chicken pox booster so their parents wouldn't go to jail. Chicken pox--a vaccine that has such dubious effectiveness and value that the federal Immunization Advisory Committee could only rationalize making it mandatory in the first place by arguing that it would prevent parents from losing about a week's worth of time from work. In other words, it was an economic argument, not a medical one.

Now, the police state of Maryland is threatening to throw parents in jail for ten days because their children haven't received a vaccine mandated solely on the grounds that it would keep parents from missing work in the first place...

Filing that under "things that make you go 'DUH!'"...

It reminds me of the same logic vaccination proponents use when they argue that non-vaccinated children are putting other children and the public health at risk.

Um... hello!? If the vaccines WORK as well as the government says they do - then your vaccinated child is perfectly safe around my non-vaccinated one. Unless you went to the G.W. Bush backwards school of logic, that's the only conclusion you can come to.

And if you're going to accuse me of getting a free ride on the system, because a majority of people still vaccinate - I can tell you right now, I'm willing to live in an America that doesn't vaccinate. At all.

So call me a skeptic, call me a crunchy, granola fruitcake because I follow not only the hard evidence and research, but my intuition. Go ahead. But I do have a sixth sense about this issue. I don't see dead people... I see dumb sheeple.