There’s a hearing Wednesday (March 12) at 1:30 in Concord on a mild-sounding bill that has the potential to give anti-vaxxers a tool to limit or even shut down childhood vaccination programs.
The full text of HB679 i: “This bill provides that no childhood immunization requirement shall require a vaccine that has
not been shown in clinical trials to prevent transmission of any disease.” Sounds reasonable, I guess, although it seems suspicious for a bunch of layfolk in Concord to give very basic immunology advice to the medical profession.
The hidden bomb, I think, is the word “prevent.” No medicine is 100% effective at anything and that includes vaccines. MMR shots might prevent 9,999 children from getting measles, mumps or rubella but if one kid has a weird immune system and gets sick, the RFK Jr. clones of the world could shout “The vaccine didn’t prevent disease and so it can’t be required!” Soon nothing will be required and, as we’re seeing in Texas right now, many children will get sick, some will suffer long-term problems (measles can deafen you), and a few will die.
I’m sure lots of medical people will show up at the Legislative Office Building for the hearing to inform the health and Human Services Committee that this is not only unnecessary but dangerous. Yet I’m no longer sure that our legislators will listen.
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Across the country there is a sufficiently large and voting block that put these deniers in office. The people who could have prevented this failed to vote or were single issue voters who couldn’t see the forest for the tree they were attached to. I fear we’re in a place where a lot of really bad things are going to have to happen before everyone wakes up and decides that ‘good enough’ government driven by facts and data is worth the effort. A lot of kids and workers are going to be killed and maimed before everyone gets it. I hate this.