Questions & Answers
(1) What are the virtues of mandatory vaccination policies? Take the example of Essentia. In your view, is firing people too draconian in order to encourage compliance? (see Dyers article and Goldbergs article). Consider these different venues and whether your answer changes depending on them:
o Health care settings?
o Schools and essential public spaces?
o The public square in general?
Daniel S. Goldberg: Against the Very Idea of Politicization in Public Health, American Journal of Public Health V. 102, no. 1 (January 2012), 44-49. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490541/
(2) What do you think of the idea of libertarian paternalism and the nudge? (See Menards article)
Jean-Frederick Menard, A Nudge for Public Health Ethics: Libertarian Paternalism as a Framework for Ethical Analysis of Public Health Interventions. Public Health Ethics, V. 3, no. 3 (2010), 229-238. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/99a8/3bbd20adce36015510e04ba4547fce5268c7.pdf?_ga=2.215418327.150839819.1517426101-235163504.1517426101
(3) Ought we to focus only on the communicable disease, and not the politics? (See Taylors article) —and is this sort of neutrality even possible in public health?
Peter Shawn Taylor, Public health officers should focus on disease, not politics, The Globe and Mail, November, 2014 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/public-health-officers-should-focus-on-disease-not-politics/article21610596/
(4) Do you buy the argument that a flu shot is not all about you? (see Carols)
Aaron Carol, Still Not Convinced You Need a Flu Shot? First, Its Not all about You, New York Times (2018):
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/upshot/flu-shot-deaths-herd-immunity.html
(5) What about vaccination safety? How should this factor in? (DeFestanos article)
Frank DeFestano, et. al. Principal Controversies in Vaccine Safety in the United States, (February, 2019), Clinical Infectious Diseases https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciz135/5316263?fbclid=IwAR1R4_L0ijjjZtfDbCp3vAULjy9N-K2PtUCrtiVQb3Vr_xsmuhPQioTw9XA#.XGnEPSsmrG8.facebook
(6) What about vaccination effectiveness? How do we interpret this? (see Reillys article)
John P. Reilly: Mandatory Vaccines: The Right Public Health Decision (2019), SILIVE https://www.silive.com/news/2019/07/mandatory-vaccines-the-right-public-health-decision-commentary.html
(7) What is herd immunity and why is it important? (see Fleschers article)
Andrew Flescher and Geoffrey Kabat, Heard Immunity —In An age of Vaccine Skepticism, It is critical to Understand Herd Immunity, https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2018/02/26/heard-immunity/#5fa6703a1399
