I’m old enough to remember getting my polio vaccine in school when I was a very little kid. We all lined up and took it in a sugar cube. I don’t think there was any controversy about that. The whole country was vastly relieved that there was a vaccine to prevent that horrible disease.
Those days are long over:
A Colorado school district said it won’t be letting kids get vaccinated on its campuses after a parent’s campaign to sabotage the school clinic culminated in a video going viral on right-wing Twitter.
Gregg McGough, the father of a 15-year-old high school student, shared a video that showed his son trying to obtain a vaccine at school by lying about his age and providing a fake note of parental consent. McGough told the Colorado Sun that his goal in sharing the video was to shut down the vaccination clinic at Littleton Public School and to prevent other clinics from cropping up in schools in the future, ostensibly by showing that students could obtain inoculations by simply forging notes from their parents.
In addition to a video showing McGough’s son, Owen, apparently misleading vaccine workers, a second video soon emerged showing another student offering up a fake name, “Draper Ensling,” and giving a phony date of birth.
In an interview with Fox News, Owen McGough said he was behind the videos and that he worked with another student to get around requirements for obtaining a COVID-19 vaccine from a clinic hosted at Heritage High School “without very much effort at all.”
“They really didn’t check into the facts,” Owen McGough said.
McGough’s dad did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Saturday but he defended the videos in a Facebook post, calling it “disturbing and criminal” that the kids had come so close to getting the vaccines–while insisting that any school district that allowed Tri-County Health Department to offer vaccines on school property is “putting your children at risk.”
“This is subterfuge and indoctrination allowing children to make medical decisions without their parents permission or even being present,” he wrote. “I find this a disgusting overreach on the part of LPSD.”
When asked by Fox News what had prompted him to make the video, Owen McGough replied: “I just don’t like seeing vaccine clinics being put into schools.”
“Bringing the vaccine clinics into schools brings politics into schools as well, and opportunities for social pressure from other students and teachers and staff administrators to get the vaccine and even override parental consent,” he said.
The pair of videos generated fury among vaccine opponents after appearing on the far-right Twitter account “Libs of Tik Tok” as an example of how easily kids could circumvent rules to get the jab. The group published the clip with the claim that the video had been recorded during school hours and featured a 16-year-old “lying about his age,” to nurses who agreed to give him the vaccine without asking him for identification.
A similar video from another student in the district who lied about their age in order to be offered a vaccine without parental consent also appeared on the Libs of TikTok’s Twitter account.
Neither of the videos shows a student getting vaccinated, but the response was swift after McGough sent a letter demanding “the immediate halting of LPS permission for Tri-County Health Department vaccine clinics’ to operate inside Littleton Public Schools.”
In an email to Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Brian Ewert published to the Libs of Tik Tok’s Twitter account, the parent details the bid by two kids who are 15 and 16 years old to see if they can get vaccinated by misleading vaccine staffers.
“The district was on notice regarding the problems with pushing the vaccine to minor children at schools,” he said.
McGough said he had been assured by the superintendent that vaccines would require permission from parents and the presence of a guardian for all doses, but he touted the kids’ “experiments” as proof that was not the case.
“Superintendent Ewert was wrong, and is now on notice for that,” he wrote, insisting that after providing false information the kids were “readily offered the shots and encouraged to get them.”
“Since there have been serious adverse effects to minors taking these shots, including serious cases of myocarditis, real physical harm could have occurred,” he wrote.
Neither child ended up getting vaccinated, as McGough himself confirmed.
Jesus H. Christ.
California has proposed a law that would allow kids 12 and up to get the vaccine without parental permission. Five other states allow minors to choose to be vaccinated:
A new bill in California would allow children to get vaccinated against diseases including COVID-19 without their parents’ consent.
However, the new bill — introduced Friday by state Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) — would allow Californians aged 12 and older to receive vaccines that meet specific federal agency criteria on their own.
Under the bill, adolescents could get vaccinated as long as the shots are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee.
As of Wednesday, about 63% of Californians aged 12-17 are fully vaccinated, according to the state department of health — but at least 28% are not.
“There are nearly 1 million teenagers in California who are not vaccinated against COVID-19, and that jeopardizes their own health. It makes our schools less safe,” Wiener told ABC News. “A lot of these teenagers would like to get vaccinated, but their parents either won’t let them or their parents aren’t making the time to go with them to get vaccinated.”
He added, “This legislation will allow teens to protect their own health and to get vaccinated against COVID-19, against the flu and other serious diseases.”
Washington, D.C., currently allows minors to receive vaccines on their own starting at age 11. San Francisco also allows kids aged 12 and older to receive COVID-19 shots without parental consent when consent is unavailable.
Additionally, five states allow minors to get vaccinated without parental consent. Alabama allows teens to receive vaccines on their own starting at age 14; Oregon at age 15; and Rhode Island, North Carolina and Southth Carolina at age 16.
I’d imagine that quite a few of the unvaccinated kids in California won’t get the shot anyway. They probably agree with their wingnut parents. But there might be a few who would like to do the right thing, protect themselves and others, and are prevented from doing so by these rules. It’s cruel to deny them the ability to do that.
These trolls who are running sting operations to “expose” schools, whether it’s using Glenn Youngkin’s “tip line” to report teachers for saying something they don’t like to recording teachers in the class room, as some have suggested, are fighting the culture wars the way they’ve been fighting it for years. Schools have been their favorite battleground for as long as I can remember — I mean, think of the Scopes trial! This is yet another skirmish in a long battle. But defying vaccine requirements that prevent the spread of a deadly disease in order to make a political point takes it to a new level. Good lord.