Is it time to consider compulsory vaccinations?

I think your accusations of hypocrisy are nonsense. You cannot logically complain about some random individual not caring about say global warming, to someone else caring about your child being vaccinated. Your failure to vaccinate your children is a real threat, and it is right to take action on that. If you want to identify hypocrisy, point to a particular person who does not compare about concern X and accuse that person of hypocrisy. And make sure that person actually holds the mindset you are accusing of being wrong.The fact of the matter is that your personal choice is extremely risky to the people around, almost none of whom are the people on this thread.

Yeah maybe you are right. It is all pretty vague.I recognize that my unvaccinated kids do present some kind of a threat but they haven't actually infected anybody in the last 12 yrs. On the other hand I absolutely bear some responsibility for the death of these people.

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Global warming is not only a threat to our future health, it already contributes to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses annually, according to a team of health and climate scientists at the World Health Organization and the University of Wisconsin at Madisonand those numbers could double by 2030.
Research data published in the journal Nature show that global warming may affect human health in a surprising number of ways: speeding the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever; creating conditions that lead to potentially fatal malnutrition and diarrhea; and increasing the likelihood of heat waves and floods.

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Although the United States accounts for just 4 percent of the world's population, it produces 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. And the contributions of individuals are significant. In 1995, the United States emitted nearly twice the amount of carbon dioxide per person as the United Kingdom. The average American produces 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year, not counting the additional 25,000 pounds-per-person average share of our industrial emissions. And these numbers continue to rise: between 1990 and 1997, our per-person emissions increased 3.4 percent. Nearly 82 percent of individual (as opposed to industrial) contributions to emissions come from activities primarily related to generating electricity and powering cars.

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sourceI am happy to consider myself as an American for the purposes of this discussion. It strikes me as being hypocritical for me to yell at someone who has not vaccinated their children because they present some threat while I am actively killing people with my other choices.

They do though. The topic is vaccination and the vast majority do get vaccinated, although they may do it for selfish reasons instead of for society. There are a few holdouts, just like there are a few holdouts to the rule that we shouldn't kill each other. It seems to be working pretty well. On the contrary, it doesn't matter at all how "they" see it as long as they comply. If they think they're being punished by not being rewarded for pulling the wagon, I don't care, as long as they pull the wagon.

That ain't gonna happen. They're idiots. You might as well try to use reason against creationism.

I haven't made any offers that you can't refuse. I've offered you a carrot but you have to pull the wagon in order to get it. Go ahead and refuse. Somebody else will pull the wagon if you don't. I have no problem giving your job to a vaccinated Mexican. Sure you are. Being unvaccinated is no different from walking around with a loaded shotgun and no safety. You may not intend to harm anybody but you want the right to be a threat.

Compliance is going to depend on how they see it. Punishing people for not getting vaccinated is going to do things like fuel conspiracy theories and its going to end up pushing people away.You want to 'win the hearts and minds' rather than just force-march them into the program. Its gonna happen. Creationism is dwindling away and anti-vaccers have become the butt of jokes.Its only a matter of time. And busting out the sticks would actually make it slower, in my opinion. You're gonna get push-back rather than compliance.

You can't win the hearts and minds of idiots. Creationism will never die. The jokes just get you push-back instead of compliance.

Not with that attitude.

My attitude isn't the controlling factor. History is against you. There will always be holdouts.

Right, so why fasten your seat belt?

ringo writes: but isn't this just another way of saying "The end justifies the means"?

No, that's not the argument. We should do what we can to make the world a better place but I think that our right to decide what makes the world better is one of the big things that really makes the world a better place. Being able to decide is more important than deciding correctly and all these mistakes that we make are the cost of that liberty.The hypocrisy thing was an attempt to show that most of us belong on the negative side of the equation at some point and I wondered if we would accept the same standard of blame and responsibility in those cases. Apparently not.

Not vaccinating your kids does not make the world a better place. I'm pretty sure you know that.

Neither does forcing people to do stuff against their will. I would much rather tolerate some percentage of the population going unvaccinated as opposed to forcing people to vaccinate.

Sometimes the end does justify the means. Try making an omelet without breaking eggs.