quote:
Then in 1944, in Prince v. Massachusetts, the Court held that states may require vaccination regardless of a parent’s religious objection, stating that, “the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.” This case made it clear that religious exemptions offered by states are elective, rather than mandated by the First Amendment’s right to free exercise of religion.

I... just... wow.

Prince was about a woman having (Prince) having a young girl she was guardian for distributing religious literature for donations in a public thoroughfare (Mass law stated at the time that females had to be at least 18 to sell goods/services in a public thoroughfare).

Prince isn't about healthcare nor even just vaccinations, it's about parental authority's limits within the context of child labor laws.

While Prince is being quoted by a few pro-vaxism types, it's pretty lazy. They should instead be looking at Prince pulls from: Jacobson v. Massachusetts

This is the problem.

quote:
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. The Court's decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state.

quote:
Massachusetts was one of only 11 states that had compulsory vaccination laws. Massachusetts law empowered the board of health of individual cities and towns to enforce mandatory, free vaccinations for adults over the age of 21 if the municipality determined it was necessary for the public health or safety of the community. Adults who refused were subject to a $5 monetary fine. In 1902, faced with an outbreak of smallpox, the Board of Health of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts adopted a regulation ordering the vaccination or revaccination of all its inhabitants.

Cambridge pastor Henning Jacobson had lived through an era of mandatory vaccinations back in his original home of Sweden. Although the efforts to eradicate smallpox were successful in Sweden, Jacobson's childhood vaccination had gone badly, leaving him with a "lifelong horror of the practice". Jacobson refused vaccination saying that "he and his son had had bad reactions to earlier vaccinations" as children and that Jacobson himself "had been caused great and extreme suffering for a long period by a disease produced by vaccination".

quote:
Justice John Marshall Harlan delivered the decision for a 7–2 majority that the Massachusetts law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that "in every well ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand" and that "(r)eal liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own (liberty), whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others."

Furthermore, the Court held that mandatory vaccinations are neither arbitrary nor oppressive so long as they do not "go so far beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public". In Massachusetts, with smallpox being "prevalent and increasing in Cambridge", the regulation in question was "necessary in order to protect the public health and secure the public safety".

Emphasis is mine, it's important because Justice Harlan expanded on it in writing his decision.

quote:
Finally, the Court acknowledged that, in "extreme cases", for certain individuals "in a particular condition of ... health", the requirement of vaccination would be "cruel and inhuman(e)", in which case, courts would be empowered to interfere in order to "prevent wrong and oppression". However, the statute in question was not "intended to be applied to such a case" and Jacobson "did not offer to prove that, by reason of his then condition, he was, in fact, not a fit subject of vaccination".

and...

quote:
"general terms should be so limited in their application as not to lead to injustice, oppression or absurd consequence".

So while Jacobson is the real foundational ruling and Prince is only supportive, Jacobson itself has limits and mandating an increasingly unreliable injection of something which only marginally qualifies as a "vaccine" and is different enough from the smallpox vaccine in efficacy and creation to warrant any or all of those three categorical exemptions (injustice, oppression or absurd consequence).

The vaccine against smallpox is a live-attenuated vaccine while the "vaccines" against SARS-CoV-2 are nucleic acid or viral-vectored thus they lead to two different types of immunity. Historically, the smallpox vaccination has been effective in preventing smallpox infection in 95% of those vaccinated. This is because as part of its efficacy the smallpox/variola vaccine causes "sterilizing immunity" (i.e. the antibodies created by the vaccine clear the virus from the human body entirely).

Thus far though we know that while vaccination against SARS CoV-2 can block symptoms from appearing, we don't know to what extent it hinders transmission. In other words, even though we now know those vaccinated can still be asymptomatic carriers we still don't know when this starts. Along with that we now know that efficacy duration is far less than what was originally stated, to such an extent that comparing it to the smallpox vaccine makes sense in only the most general of discussions.

This post was edited on 9/9/21 at 11:46 am