Thank you Jenny McCarthy...

[Aglifter]

Murder does not take a concious desire to kill - RE:depraved heart murder.

(I realize it's becoming a slight pet peeve of mine, but if you want to play lawyer, go to law school, or at least look something up and be correct.)

I don't know if you could get someone who does not knowingly infect others on murder - but I do think there would be a good class-action case possible against the "anti-vaccine" folks for the costs and damages resultant, foreseeably, from their reckless actions.

[Aesop]

Gee, then it's a good thing I checked a common legal resource which seems to indicate pretty plainly that what I wrote was right down the middle of the fairway.(Not least of which by requiring, y'know, an actual body.) But good luck to anyone arguing that a failure to get vaccinated is de facto depraved indifference. That wouldn't even pass the actuarial table smell test. It would be like prosecuting someone for failing to install an elephant-proof fence in Brooklyn, or not building a meteorite deflector screen over a given playground. Even for those vaccinated for mumps, the effectiveness rate is between 65-95% effective. So for all anyone can prove, the disease is being acquired and passed on by as many as a random 33% of those who got their shots. Active cases nationwide run into a few hundred each year out of 300M people, and deaths in the single to low double digits nationally per year, much less than deaths from being hit by lightning.

In 2006, there was an outbreak affecting more than 6,584 people in the United States, with many cases occurring on college campuses. In 2009, an outbreak started in close-knit religious communities and schools in the Northeast, resulting in more than 3,000 cases. These outbreaks have shown that when people who are sick with mumps have close contact with a lot of other people (such as among students living in dormitories and students and families in close-knit communities) mumps can spread even among vaccinated people.

When you want to correct me on my misunderstanding of something fairly arcane regarding the law, by all means, have at it. What anyone, even lawyers, doesn't understand about the law is what keeps the other ones in business, without even considering the monstrous gaps that constitute what I don't know.
But the finer points of second degree murder aren't particularly difficult to grasp, other than a small number of issues specific to a given jurisdiction and their penal code.

[Aglifter]

Clause 2 of the link you posted mentions depraved indifference - which does not require the intent to kill, merely engaging in reckless actions with indifference to the fate of others.

As an FYI, not all states have a "second degree" murder.

As I said, there is not a case, probably, for murder on an anti-vaccine person, short of a Typhoid Mary, etc.

[Netpackrat]

IANAL, but it seems that this argument is irrelevant since you are going to have a hard time making a case for depraved indifference, if the anti-vaxxer honestly believes that the vaccines are dangerous.

[dfwmtx]

All we are saying
is give polio a chance.

[Aglifter]

I don't think it would be too easy to get an idiot convicted on depraved heart either - barring say knowingly frolicking with the diseased then, once you feel a little "itchy " heading to the immuno-compromised/maternity wards because you think they should feel the love of measles - even then, it might be a tough case - depends how many mothers who miscarried/mourners the judge lets you put on - and the appellate court may take a dim view of that.

BUT, I do think a strong case could be made for reckless endangerment on a civil suit, on a class action basis.

They have no more grounds for their beliefs than someone would for earnestly believing his car car could fly, provided it drove it off a certain overpass at a high enough speed.

I realize the likelihood of recovery wouldn't be high - maybe slightly more against whatever quacks advised them against vaccines in their professional capacity, but it would be a, possible, means if encouraging the fools to get their shots.

[Windy Wilson]

Just letting kids get sick is not as good of a solution.

Only people who have not experienced the undiluted, unvaccinated disease can think [strike]so[/strike] just letting kids get sick is a good idea(Edit to clarify, thanks to Greg).
I had measles, [strike]Kindergarten[/strike] First Grade (You can see in the school picture that I looked sickly compared to my Kindergarten picture). My brother was too young to get the vaccine so my parents tried to quarantine him. in the other end of the house.
It worked, he did not get measles. A family friend said that his mother thought that the reason he needed glasses as he grew up was because he read while he had measles. Never minding the side effects of the disease itself, like chickenpox causing shingles or Scarlet Fever causing enlarged hearts later in life, the fever itself that comes with these childhood illnesses is dangerous and brings its own risks, including (as happened to the daughter of a friend, deafness).
Only people who think measles, mumps, chickenpox, diptheria, and such have no risk of childhood mortality can think not being vaccinated is preferable to taking the long odds that something might happen from the vaccine.

My SIL said something recently about sympathy for the moms who are concerned, but my sympathy ends when the harmful behavior begins. She would not think it understandable or excusable for moms to tie amulets around their children instead of seat belts because a non-zero number of children die each year because they were belted into the car and would not have had they been loose in the car.

Will this be one area, like sex and drugs, where under leftists people are free to choose, or will the totalitarians eventually get around to making some course of action compulsory?

[Greg]

Just letting kids get sick is not as good of a solution.

Only people who have not experienced the undiluted, unvaccinated disease can think so.

I think you have what he said backwards.

I had measles, in Kindergarten. My brother was too young to get the vaccine so my parents tried to quarantine him. in the other end of the house.
It worked, he did not get measles. A family friend said that his mother thought that the reason he needed glasses as he grew up was because he read while he had measles. Never minding the side effects of the disease itself, like chickenpox causing shingles or Scarlet Fever causing enlarged hearts later in life, the fever itself that comes with these childhood illnesses is dangerous and brings its own risks, including (as happened to the daughter of a friend, deafness).
Only people who think measles, mumps, chickenpox, diptheria, and such have no risk of childhood mortality can think not being vaccinated is preferable to taking the long odds that something might happen from the vaccine.

Once people have been protected from danger for long enough and forget what the danger is like and why they were afraid of it, they begin to disdain what's been protecting them. Particularly if the protection involved any inconvenience, or, heaven forbid, discomfort.

It's human nature and you see it everywhere.

It is in fact, a pretty good first approximation of modern developed world liberalism. And teenager-hood.

[Aglifter]

In some ways, it may be viewed as inevitable. To be vaccinated carries some, non-zero, cost - even if its nothing more than a pin-prick.

Provided enough other people are vaccinated, to keep up the herd immunity, the unvaccinated get to obtain the benefits of the herd immunity, while avoiding the cost.

AKA, People can be completely, mind-blowingly stupid. Like Socialist - they know it will fail, at some point, but provided they bankrupt their children, rather than themselves, they don't care.

[Windy Wilson]

I think you have what he said backwards.

I think you're right, so I edited it to be (I hope) more clear.

Herd immunity only works for diseases that are only carried by the herd. The Polio virus, IIRC, is waterborne during part of its lifespan, so even if 99 44/100% of the little walking petri dishes known as children are vaccinated against it, there's no herd protection because it does not depend exclusively on a human host as was the case with Smallpox. I think Measles is the same way, but I don't know about Mumps, Chickenpox, etc.

If they're relying on herd [strike]mentality[/strike] Immunity for these other diseases they're really relying on their children being able to overcome the disease without any permanent ill effects (eg as from rubella).