Vaccination with the MMR vaccine should be mandatory

Con had to do at least one of two things in this debate. He either had to show that my case was not net beneficial or provide an alternative case that would improve upon mine. By conceding the safety and efficacy of the MMR vaccine, he conceded an essential part of my solvency, ensuring only medical upsides for every person who takes them and those they associate with. By conceding the numbers I presented in R1, he conceded a set of quantifiable impacts. Returning to tens of thousands of cases, hundreds of deaths and thousands of chronic disabilities per year for measles alone is a significant harm but compounded with the damage to tens of thousands of infants from rubella and the many cases of encephalitis and meningitis from mumps, this is a massive problem. What disadvantages has Con presented? He"s argued that the loss of freedom of choice is itself harmful. I conceded a reduction in choice from the outset. However, Con hasn"t afforded any weight to this argument. He just states that loss of freedom, regardless of the freedom and regardless of how many people are losing it, is damaging. That"s not something we can measure. How many people are losing this freedom of choice? How much weight should we give that loss? How does it weigh against the health harms? Con fails to answer all 3 questions, which ensures that this is a vague and unquantifiable impact. Meanwhile, every illness someone gets from one of these antivaxxers is a substantial loss of freedom, and not just choice. Every death is a complete loss of all freedoms. And those have clear numbers and value attached to them. He"s argued that I violate the Constitution. The Constitution doesn"t guarantee a freedom of choice, nor an absolute freedom of religion. Con talking about the Constitution, yet he"s solely asserted that I"ve violated it without any warrants or evidence. In many cases, our laws do restrict both. I cannot go 20 miles over the speed limit in my car. If I am caught, I will be fined. I cannot choose to eschew my taxes. If I am caught, I will be fined. That"s the law, and it"s constitutional, just as child marriage and human sacrifice are against the law. Even if you buy that there"s some uncertainty with regards to constitutionality, that"s not a harm to my case. The Constitution is not immutable, and if it does not facilitate the public good, it should be changed. That is yet another reason to support the resolution. What attacks has he levied on my solvency? He"s argued that a tax penalty won"t work. This is a straw man. My case includes no tax penalties. I"m talking about a fine. A fine is wholly enforceable under the law. They would function similarly to court fines, and hence have various enforcement means attached to them.[26] Even if you see some parallels to a tax penalty, Con hasn"t shown that a tax penalty is either possible to elude or impossible to enforce. The source he provides shows that people do pay this tax penalty, even if it only comes out of the returns they would have received on their taxes. As for constitutionality, the same article states that the courts found that this tax penalty was constitutional, and that is not currently up for debate. He"s argued that people will pay the fine rather than take the vaccine. Yes, an antivaxxer can pay the fine in lieu of vaccination. Considering that it scales with earnings, it affects everyone equally. This ensures one of two outcomes for every individual who could but has not received the MMR vaccine in status quo: either they receive it and thus confer protection to others in their communities, or they pay a fine that goes into public coffers, providing better funding for health care in the US and ensuring that ALL illnesses and injuries are better-treated and less damaging. Con dropped this impact and hasn"t explained how people would avoid the fine, which means Con conceded the final link to my solvency. Either these people support the health of their neighbors by taking the vaccine and thus refusing to be a vector for MMR, or they fund efforts that ensure a better standard of health more indirectly. If it is their desire to continue being a vector, then they owe their communities for the harm they could cause. Either way, the health of communities across the US improves, it"s just a matter of how. What has Con done to minimize my impacts? Con has tried to minimize my impacts by comparison to other issues, yet he drops my responses. Any disease spread, and especially any resultant deaths, are sufficient reason to address this problem. Many individuals have no means of preventing these deadly diseases from reaching them, and thus prevention on an individual basis is necessary. The numbers are substantial, as is the severity of effect. Just because people may not panic at the thought that there are unvaccinated individuals around them who could be carrying deadly diseases doesn"t mean that the risk those people present is unworthy of that panic. A measles outbreak can spread rapidly and silently, wreaking havoc on a population. Sounds worthy of panicking to me.[27] Con seems particularly focused on the comparison to car accidents, though he drops some key arguments that turn this argument against him. I"ll repeat them here: The reason we have traffic laws is to prevent a great deal of car accidents that would happen if they did not exist. They are also the reason we require individuals with a car to have a license when they drive, to get the car registered, and to have insurance. Car accidents represent such a significant danger that cars and their owners are highly regulated, and their personal freedoms are abridged to protect others from drivers who would put them at risk because of their poor choices. The same logic applies to vaccines: individuals pose a significant risk to others by carrying around a potentially deadly and easily transmissible disease. They made a poor choice by not receiving a vaccination. In doing so, they were free to harm others who could not make such a choice. Con attempted to challenge my numbers by pointing to lower numbers in the UK. However, this has nothing to do with this debate. This case takes place in the US, where antivaxxers are far more common. Con also ignores that the numbers are INCREASING in the US, meaning that these harms will continue to grow.[28-30] Therefore, my impacts stand with not only their current weight, but an increasing weight as we go forward. What alternative has Con presented? Con concedes that MMR cause loss of life. They are a clear, calculable harm that is expanding year-on-year. He also drops that my case would take all the money acquired through fines and spend it on health care, which would improve health outcomes across the board. He must outweigh these impacts. Con"s only solution is to disseminate more information. He doesn"t state how he will do this, what information will be distributed, who will distribute it, and, most importantly, why antivaxxers, who both make up the vast majority of people who do not vaccinate and clearly have a bias against such information, will listen. And there is substantial evidence that they won"t.[31] His case is so vague that establishing any degree of solvency, much less impact, is impossible. He provides no reason why the information currently available to the public is insufficient, nor why adding to that information via any means would suddenly change peoples" minds. Giving Con the benefit of the doubt (voters should not do this " it was up to Con to specify his case, not me), Con"s case mirrors the campaigns he cites. He talks about a worldwide campaign. First, this chiefly reduced measles rates in countries that were not the US, which means its effectiveness here is suspect. If anything, the drop off in the US is clearly associated with the development of the vaccine and its best use practices.[32] Second, rates have surged since 2005 in the Americas to be higher than they were in 2000, despite the fact that more information has become readily available.[33] Third, even if you buy this, Con provides no support for a similar system working for mumps and rubella, the former of which has also surged in recent years.[34]. Con has in no way shown that a public initiative of any sort would be effective, and he hasn"t specified how such an initiative would proceed. Most importantly, he fails to recognize that we live in an age where this information is more available than ever before, particularly in the US where Internet access is more prevalent than ever.[35] He cannot meaningfully increase access to that information, nor has Con countered any of the arguments I made in the previous round about the unwillingness of antivaxxers to listen to such a campaign. Essentially, Con"s case is the status quo. There are already massive campaigns and groups attempting to convince people to get people to vaccinate. Con isn"t adding to that. He"s simply feeding into an education system that, despite all of its efforts, has seen vaccination rates have go down in the past decade.[36] As information has become more available, more people have turned away from vaccination. Con"s case does not affect that. Conclusion: Con has essentially conceded my solvency and impacts. He"s also failed to present a competitive counterplan. The combination of these two ensures that my case both has clear, substantial benefits and outweighs his. Only my case is certain to improve health outcomes, whether by increasing vaccination rates, increasing funds for the health care system, or a combination of the two. The public good clearly wins out in this debate. Vote Pro. 26. https://bit.ly... 27. https://abcn.ws... 28. https://bit.ly... 29. https://bit.ly... 30. https://nyti.ms... 31. https://bit.ly... 32. https://bit.ly... 33. https://bit.ly... 34. https://bit.ly... 35. https://pewrsr.ch... 36. https://bit.ly...