In the UK you could not, well not today.
They were de facto compulsory in my youth e.g. they went around and did the whole school.
Unfortunately my family came to the UK when I was 12 and I missed out the measles one, so I caught it, and it did a lot of permanent damage. Really p1sses me off when trendy parents don’t want their kids (who have no say in the matter, and a fair % would prefer to have the parents of one of their friends 
) vacced.
IMHO if the mortality was say 10% not 1% then it should and would be mandatory. I am actually surprised it was not mandatory at 1%, given the ~300BN cost so far, plus incalculable social / mental health cost. In the end, the UK did it as fast as it could get the vaccine, anyway, but I am sure lessons will be learnt for next time.
More than 5% of the population can not be vaccinated for medical reasons.
Sure, but that’s life. Life is not fair. What % of the population cannot get a highly paid job, because they don’t have the IQ? And so on. The country as a whole has to deal with these issues. CV19 is no exception; it is nothing different to what came before. Probably the biggest factor is that it is the first big epidemic since social media got going.
kwlf wrote:
How would you make vaccines compulsory, …Making them mandatory for certain roles e.g. healthcare work, is a separate debate.
It’s not a black/white discussion.
Of course: In almost all European countries it is not constitutionally possible to make it compulsory in a legal sense. But the core question is, what the “certain roles” are that you mention: Healthcare jobs? Teachers? Restaurant staff? Shop owners? Users of public transportation?
For each of those you find a reason why vaccination would be a good idea – the debate is “just” if those arguments are strong enough to actually enforce them. And if for all of those roles you would make it mandatory, you have a de facto compulsory vaccination even it is not legally.
In Germany (and that was decided before Covid), measles vaccination is required to enter into Kindergarden or school (if you are not exempt for medical reasons). Therefore we have a de facto compulsory measles vaccination for the young generations
Kids immune systems work in a different and Covid is a complete non-event for them.
I would agree with Peter if there was any sort of risk. Even a 1% risk, but for kids it is as close to zero as you can get.
Presumably someone who feels sufficiently strongly can still homeschool? Someone who doesn’t want to be a waiter, doctor etc. can go and find a more solitary occupation.
Yes, both scenarios represent limitations on peoples’ rights, but in a relatively minor way compared to administering a medicine against their wishes. ‘Compulsory’ in the true sense of the word, involves burly security guards holding people down (or at least the threat and realistic option of such).
kwlf wrote:
‘Compulsory’ in the true sense of the word, involves burly security guards holding people down (or at least the threat and realistic option of such).
As said: This will not happen. If you, however, demand a vaccination for using public transport, visiting restaurants, shops, etc. (for all of that there are reasons – again, question is only if they are good enough), … it will strongly feel like compulsory. But technically it’s still just an offer – one you can’t refuse.
Peter wrote:
More than 5% of the population can not be vaccinated for medical reasons.
Sure, but that’s life. Life is not fair.
Suer – that’s true! But it is not only true fro Covid, is it?
Why should the government (well, it’s not the government, it’s the tax money of other people) give you healthcare at all if you are sick. Life is not fair?
Why should the government (well, …) pay law enforcement to take care that you can keep your plane and I don’t take it from you because I like it and I’m stronger than you? Life is not fair?
Most – if not all – rules of the construct we call “society” is there to protect the weak from the strong. It is based on the idea that everybody might be strong in some situation and weak in others – and that we are all better off if we take care of each other.
If a Non-Vaxxer argues “bad luck for the ones who can’t get vaccinated” why should one of those not say "bad luck for non-vaxxers which are weaker than us. Let’s take “their” belongings".
Smallpox vaccination was compulsory for small kids (babies?) in the UK. I missed it as a sickly baby, but got vaccinated at 21 when there was an outbreak in Scotland.
If the threat is great enough, the Government will have public support for compulsory vaccination.
Last week the Scottish Covid-19 map looked worse than I remember seeing it
That has always amazed me, because Scotland has such a self evidently low population density.
One explanation I heard the other day, from the Oban area, is not particularly charitable: a lot of the locals are refusing the vaccine, refusing to take any precautions, refusing to participate in track/trace, basically don’t believe it exists, and mix closely in the pubs.
But actually Oban is not so bad:
One 100% factual and true statistical point from Norway for July:
Deaths from/with Covid-19 : 0
Deaths by being hit by lightning : 2
I have seen several comments along the lines of “all the vulnerable are now protected” or more accurately “everybody who is vulnerable has now been offered a vaccine which would protect them”.
Which is largely true but has a twist to it.
I have a lot of time for David Spiegelhalter (risk and statistics is his day-job) and his recent Guardian article
explained why it’s mostly vaccinated people who are dying now, and why that is not as bad as it sounds.
It is worth reading in full but this paragraph caught my eye:
Quote
But the risk of dying from Covid-19 is extraordinarily dependent on age: it halves for each six to seven year age gap. This means that someone aged 80 who is fully vaccinated essentially takes on the risk of an unvaccinated person of around 50 – much lower, but still not nothing, and so we can expect some deaths.
So “all the vulnerable are now protected” does over-simplify the reality.
Having said that, the UK has, once again, failed to control its infection rate and so that genie is out of the bottle – the current system of self-isolation must surely break soon. With over 250,000 infections every 10 days (and rising) and all their contacts getting ‘pinged’ by the NHS app, a significant, randomly changing, part of the UK population will be in permanent self-isolation. It is especially bad in schools.
So under current circumstances I see some relaxation of the rules in the UK as unavoidable.
But despite BoJo’s gung-ho promises, no relaxation can be “irreversible”. As I pointed out some weeks back, it’s great that vaccination mostly stops hospitalisation, but it’s not so great that vaccinated people are getting infected – it’s a great way of selecting for a truly vaccine-resistant virus. Probably the biggest population of infected vaccinated people is here in the UK so IF that variant emerges then “the English Variant v2.0” takes us all back towards March 2020. I say “towards” because we do seem to better at vaccines now :-)
LeSving wrote:
One 100% factual and true statistical point from Norway for July:Deaths from/with Covid-19 : 0
Deaths by being hit by lightning : 2
In Sweden for July:
Death from/with Covid-19: 0
Deaths by being hit by lightning : 0
So clearly Sweden is handling the lightning hazard better than Norway does.
