@Leila wrote:
Sharing more thoughts.
I think it would be interesting if Mr. Doctrow took up this subject again, without parody. I wasn't really confused when I wrote about gathering brakes, (fiddleheads,) but a lot of people self-reported being “taken in” because Mr. Doctrow is usually writing about keeping the Internet free, or a genocide not being reported in the media, something very serious, reported in a serious way. I was amazed when I realized that Mr. Doctrow was writing a goof piece. Now, when he writes something, he's going to have to preface it with, “HEY!!!! I'm SERIOUS about this, OK? NOT like that LAST TIME!!!” Maybe for the rest of his life. It could be hard to ever trust him again, alas.
Well, here's a comment on the actual subject: The Supreme Court's 1905 ruling that the state could compel vaccinations in Jacobson v. Massachusetts was put into effect by making it mandatory for enrolling in public schools (and also for enlisting in the military, where they will vaccinate you for as many as 36 different nasty things, depending on where you are to be deployed, but I digress.) Nowadays, with the option of opening a charter school, it would be possible for a group of anti-vaxers to open a school just for themselves, no immunization required.
Of course, I'm thinking no one of them even considers doing that because, “What! Put my kid in with a whole bunch of germ-y snot-nosed kids who haven't been vaccinated? Whaddya think, that I'm crazy?”
They read that stuff about herd immunity, too, y'know, and they APPRECIATE IT. :)!