Anti-vaxxer leaflet found inserted in book sold by Amazon
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Is it not possible for some of those affected by the recent measles outbreak, and others adversely impacted, to file a class action against the anti-vaxxers ?
Call me paranoid, but lately I've been thinking about getting the MMR as an adult who is in mid 40s - and I'm pissed. So, I can't even imagine what someone who is directly impacted might be feeling.
Also, the anti-vaxxer who is affected can argue they were misled or misinformed, or if they are children of anti-vaxxers, not anti-vaxxer themselves. Many possibilities..
Disclaimer: IMNAL.
No.
(1) There are people that cannot vaccinate for a variety of medical reasons; and
(2) Real vaccines are less than 100% effective (I think current measles vaccine is 93% after the first dose, 97% after both), but approximate 100% effectiveness when you have sufficient immunized population because you have a combination of direct immunity and herd immunity, the latter of which is just “you are less likely to get exposed because the people you come in contact with are largely immune.”
Anti-vaxxers jeopardise everyone.
Against anti-vaxxers as a group? Doubtful. Against the patient zero who got you sick? Maybe. Against those distributing literature? Particularly if they're making money from the enterprise? Probably the best bet.
(Nitpick: anyone can sue anyone for anything. If it's really stupid, it will get thrown out. If it has legal merit, it should win. Asking "is it possible for X to sue Y" is therefore better framed as "would X be likely to win a case against Y".)
Rather than saying “kill yourself”, it’s more like saying “kill yourself - slowly, infectiously, and painfully.”
Antivaxxers genuinely believe that vacinations cause illness. That they are wrong doesn't make their speech illegal.
Telling people in general that they should is protected; telling a particular person that they should may or may not be depending on other factors.
> AVers aren’t much different here.
They are quite a bit different. Yes, not vaccinated increase risk of infection, sickness, and death for both the person choosing that action and other people, but it is a much less proximate relationship to any death than suicide does. Advocating suicide is not itself generally illegal, and advocating courses of action that are not intended to cause death but do in fact increase its likelihood is even less likely to be illegal in general.
It does; if speech is constitutionally protected, it cannot violate the law, and if an action does not violate a legal obligation, it is not a basis for damages.
This is why (for instance) it is much harder to bring a libel/slander case for damages in the US compared to Britain; US libel/slander laws (even in jurisdictions where no statutory provisions exists so the common law would otherwise control) are limited to avoid punishing protected speech.
> otherwise all the copywriters will have a field day with misleading commercials.
Commercial speech has for a long time been found to be less likely to be constitutionally protected than many other forms of speech.
it's also important that we are exposed and open to ideas that challenge our beliefs. wisdom begins in doubt.
This post has less than an hour, so the priority is 11/1^2=11
The third post is currently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19778023 that has 98 points in 3 hour, so the priority is 98/3^3=10.9
So ... probably just a weird order when the story is too young, let it age and drop.
[1] The exact formula is something like (poins-1)/(age+1)^1.6 or something like that. points/age^2 is a not very bad approximation, but it's much easier to calculate by hand. There are also flags and penalties applied automatically, by the mods and by the users. (The exact details are elsewhere.)