Canada

No, they should just not be allowed to prevent their children from being vaccinated.

Or their own. Lock them the fuck up.

Should they, yes, will they, not in the west.

Offering a generous tax credit for proof of vaccination ought to resolve the problem easily enough, given the simple-minded and grift-oriented nature of your average antivaxxer.

I'm personally of the opinion that refusing to vaccinate your kids should not be a choice parents get to make. Just like how you can't choose to starve your children, no matter how deeply and truly you believe that we can draw all our necessary sustenance from the air.

In Canada we have a legal concept called the "Duty of persons to provide necessaries."

Here's the relevant legal code:

215 (1) Every one is under a legal duty (a) as a parent, foster parent, guardian or head of a family, to provide necessaries of life for a child under the age of sixteen years;

https://www.criminalnotebook.ca/index.php/Failing_to_Provide_the_Necessaries_of_Life_(Offence)

I firmly believe that vaccinations should be deemed one of the "necessaries of life" under this article of the criminal code. Like food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. You shouldn't have a choice in this matter. We shouldn't even be talking about whether or not that choice harms someone else's kid, because that's actually beside the point. At a basic level, we as a society have already agreed that children's right to be properly sheltered and cared for outweighs their parents rights to decide how they live. The idea that there should be an exception for vaccines - something that can mean the difference between life and death - is absolutely ridiculous.

Parents who don't vaccinate their children without a good medical reason should be treated as any other parent who intentionally abuses, harms, mistreats, or abandons their children, simple as that.

If they harm other people on top of that, then that should probably count as attempted murder plus aggravated assault and battery, or some equivalent.

It's a shame that rampant wilful idiocy with intent to cause harm and mayhem isn't a criminal offence, though, because they should also be charged with that.

I’d argue that parents should be liable to the state, not the victim or their family. This is a societal issue, and civil liability won’t fix it.

I don't disagree with this mindset, but I do want to say that it should be on the plaintiff to prove your child caused the problem rather than the defendant to prove they did not. Proving a negative is damn near impossible in court.

Its impossible to prove you caught an airborne disease from a specific individual.

It’s not an unreasonable idea. The parents should absolutely be held liable.

Exact responsibility would be virtually impossible to prove, though. Even a lawyer who graduated at the bottom of their class from a terrible law school could easily defend the accused parents.

If it can be proven. Yes. But there are too many variables to be able to prove it usually.

Liable for what? Medical expenses, funeral costs? Expected life earnings? What about the homeschool/tutoring expenses of immunocompromised kids that didn’t catch measles because the were withdrawn from school due to fear of an outbreak. I’m not trying to throw out straw men to muddy the water, but where do you draw the line between someone’s actions and their consequences.

I’m not talking about criminal charges, just basic responsibility.

Maybe we should be. There are consequences to reckless driving and drunk driving independent of whether you actually harm someone because this actions are inherently dangerous to others.

Not an antivaxxer, but that sounds difficult to prove. Even for mere liability, how would you demonstrate on a balance of probabilities that someone got sick specifically because someone else didn't vaccinate?

(Also I really hope small-claims court isn't the appropriate avenue for trying something as serious as infecting a child with measles)

I think there are a few issues:

1. How do you prove kid A gave kid B measels?

2. Why isn't kid B vaccinated? Because they don't need to be, group immunity. Well that is no longer true with anti vax so...

3. Kid B then gives kid C measels, so kid B's parents are now liable.

4. Your in small claims court. You have to prove damages. So you're going for loss of earning for an adult looking after the kid + pain and suffering. Is that payout going to be worth filing papers, legal advice etc.

You'd be better passing a law to mandate vaccines, but that won't be politically viable.

Just my thoughts - am not Canadian.

How are you going to deal with pesky things like religious freedoms and the Mennonites/similar cults?