Will they do anything about it? Probably not.
“Vaccinations have proven to be — the basic ones — helpful in preventing the spread of measles, polio and other things,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said. “My children are vaccinated, my grandchildren are vaccinated. I don’t agree with that.”
The charged issue had already been front and center under President Trump, whose pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has long fought vaccines with warnings that they cause autism — a view roundly rejected by most public health experts.
Building on that vaccine skepticism, the Florida Department of Health last week announced it will ban mandates for schoolchildren to be vaccinated for numerous diseases, making it the first state to make such an action.
The decision affects jabs for hepatitis B, chickenpox, haemophilus influenzae type B and pneumococcal diseases, including meningitis.
Plenty within the GOP expressed doubts about mandating the COVID-19 vaccine in recent years. But Florida’s move against routine childhood vaccinations unnerved a number of Republican lawmakers who worry not only about the decision, but also what it could mean for their respective states as vaccine skepticism continues to rise in the years following the COVID-19 outbreak.
How odd that denigrating the vaccine that saved hundreds of millions of people around the globs might lead to skepticism of all vaccines? Who could have predicted?
“It’s a horrible idea,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told The Hill. “I think it’s a bad idea, and I think it could create … a pressure on other states to do the same thing.”
“I just think it’s bad policy. I don’t think it’s rooted in science. I think it’s rooted in political science, but not epidemiology,” he continued. “I think it’s a mistake, and I think there could be some one-upsmanship measure that I hope North Carolina doesn’t touch.”
That’s almost certainly going to happen. And the more states that do it the more these diseases will spread to the rest of us. This country is going to become a much more dangerous place especially for small children and anyone who is immunocompromised.
But as we saw with COVID, even mass death didn’t stop the MAGA cultists from refusing the vaccines and it’s estimated that at least 200,000 excess deaths resulted from their selfishness. Many of them were their own friends and relatives.
Some House Republicans are expressing similar misgivings with the direction the country is headed, warning that Kennedy’s ascension to the top of the HHS threatens to undermine a decades-old trust in vaccines that experts say have saved countless lives.
“I don’t agree with him on vaccines, it’s that simple,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R), a Pennsylvania centrist. “Vaccines save lives. I support them, and I think any effort to erode them is damaging to our country.” Fitzpatrick said he’s hearing those same anxieties among his constituents, citing a simple reason.
“My district supports common sense,” he said.
I’m sure they still back Trump to the hilt through — the man who made a cheap backroom deal in the election to get Bobby Jr on board and is now letting him kill their children. Nothing is ever his fault.
Meanwhile in Florida, this quack thinks his job is to protect parents’ rights above all else:
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo admitted over the weekend that the department did not engage in any projections or data analysis of what removing vaccine mandates could mean for future disease outbreaks, such as measles, polio or whooping cough. He added he did not believe any such studies were necessary.
“Ultimately, this is an issue very clearly of parents’ rights,” he said. “So, do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into their [child’s body]? I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”
So, I guess parents have a right to hurt their children. Good to know. But coming from the party that worships Donald Trump I guess it isn’t much of a surprise.