Law Requiring California Parents To Vaccinate Their Children Likely To Pass

[Agnosticsherbet]

Law Requiring California Parents To Vaccinate Their Children Likely To Pass
(CBS SF) — Last Thursday, a state law was introduced that, if passed, will eliminate the “personal belief” exception to California’s vaccination law.
Right now, under California law there are two ways to get out of having a child vaccinated: one is if you have a medical reason, and two is if you have a “personal belief” that prevents vaccination. The law proposed last week would leave that medical exception in place and get rid of that “personal belief” part.
The lawmaker who authored the bill is State Senator Richard Pan, who is also a doctor. He’s concerned about the outbreak of measles in California since December and the high numbers of people opting out of vaccines using the personal belief exemption.
The law as it is written so far does not have any religious exemption. And one might not be required. According to a 1944 U.S. Supreme Court case, “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.” In fact, West Virginia and Mississippi do not have religious exemptions.

An important law wends its way through the California Congress. It looks like it has a good chance of passing and the religous, anti-intelectual anti-vax immunity will go away in california.

Very, very good.

[Hekate]

1. Good. I didn't realize that SCOTUS ruled on this in 1944!

Somehow I thought the religious exemption was universal, because the number of recognized religious sects that forbid modern medicine is rather small, and we managed to achieve herd immunity without their help back in the days when the only vaccinations we had were DPT and smallpox.

But what with one thing and another a certain combination of complacency and nuttiness not related to religion spread to enough people to jeopardize herd immunity seriously. So it is definitely time to clamp down on requirements for vaccination requirements for K-12, and the precedent of the SCOTUS ruling in 1944 and 2 states already not having a religious exemption will help California legislators get this bill passed.

To which this Californian says: about damn time.

[HockeyMom]

2. The childhood population of the US is only 25%

If every single child in the country was vaccinated. would that achieve Herd Immunity? You would need 70% of the 75% adult population vaccinated. Only 5% of the adult population is not vaccinated, or more importantly, up to date of their adult boosters? Think so? While we have recently seen a lot of measles outbreaks, there have also been whooping cough outbreaks also. That goes to the Pertussis boosters for adults.

Take that DPT vaccination which requires adult boosters. What is the adult booster rate for that? Religious exemption for adults WHEN? IF an adult goes to a doctor, they cannot outright refuse any vaccination the doctor tells them they need? When my husband was in the hospital recently, his doctor said he needed a Hep. B vaccination. My husband refused. He did not need to sign any religious exemption document. What were they going to do? Not let him leave the hospital until he had his vaccinations? They cannot do that with an adult.

I know many people do not like this, but there is a BIGGER PROBLEM with ADULT vaccinations than childhood vaccinations.


http://www.examiner.com/article/u-s-unveils-comprehensive-new-adult-vaccination-plan

[Agnosticsherbet]

6. You are correct, but vaccinated children will grow to be vaccinated adults.

And adults, vaccinated or otherwise, will not be attending public schools for an education unless they are teachers.

[HockeyMom]

7. who will need adult boosters

not all vaccinations given in childhood last an entire lifetime. I gave Pertussis as just one example which requires adult boosters. I am sure there must be others.

Just to use myself as an example, I was vaccinated as a child with DPT, but never had boosters. I was never asked to show any immunization record, or take a blood draw for childhood diseases that I had, working in public schools in NYS and Florida. The schools ASKED if we wanted that Hep. B vaccine but we were allowed to decline that, and every new staff member I was with at orientation declined it.

Adults can, and SHOULD, be allowed to refuse medical care, which includes vaccinations.

[Agnosticsherbet]

8. The law doesn't insist that adults get boosters.

Adults are allowed to endanger the lives of other people and their children without any repercussions.

I was in the Navy. Everybody was vaccinated. My wife works at a hospital and is required to keep her vaccinations up to date. I take that as a responsibility, and long settled science shows that vaccination saves lives.

Other people can choose to be irresponsible. It is one of those unwritten liberties.

[Hekate]

9. There's a whooping cough epidemic in California right now, affecting infants and some adults

Some of the infants end up in the hospital gasping for breath, and some of them have died. Adults who have had pertussis report that paroxysmal coughing fits endure long after they have recovered and are no longer contagious. This is due to the toxins that remain at the bottom of the lungs, apparently.

My daughter runs a preschool. When I found out that even vaccinated adults might get pertussis, I asked my doctor for a booster just so I wouldn't run the risk of infecting a child.

Tetanus, which causes lockjaw, lives in the soil. It really does not care what you believe if you or your child gets a puncture wound. Herd immunity has nothing to do with protection from this often-fatal disease. I make sure my booster is up to date for my own sake.

Mark Twain wrote a passage about the death of a child from membranous croup (diphtheria) in one of his novels -- it might have been Connecticut Yankee -- that stood my hair on end. Turns out he was writing from his own experience, as his son died of the disease at 19 months.

The measles outbreak in California and the mumps outbreak at some college in the northwest tell me that an outbreak of rubella is not far behind, as they are all in the same vaccine. We won't really know about the relatively mild rubella cases until babies start being born deaf, with heart defects, cataracts, mental retardation, or all of the above.

I know you and I aren't really communicating with each other, no matter how often we "meet" over this issue. All I can do is keep putting the facts out there and hope others will learn.

[HockeyMom]

10. That is your right to speak out

although I seriously doubt you are going to change very many minds. People who want to vaccinate themselves or their children will. Those who don't won't, especially with adult vaccination. I am only addressing the adult vaccination situation (far worse than the childhood rates) one and how it will fail to compel adults to do so.

There is a new campaign for Adult Vaccinations, and even a petition to the White House against it. For me personally, it is an issue of freedom, not just with vaccinations but the entire program of Wellness/Preventive Care under the ACA. Vaccinations are just one small part of that. As an adult, I refuse ALL of that. Just a TAX in my mind as the SC said.

First, they came for the little children. I did not have a little child, so I ignored it. Then they came for ME........... If you cannot refuse medical care for your own adult body, you have no freedom, period. The "greater good" is not worth taking that freedom away.

[daredtowork]

25. Another concern I have

is that if vaccine requirements are linked to public school access in California, that will promote home schooling. The home schooling movement has been where fundamentalist religion, militias, John Birchers, sovereign citizens, and all sorts of other radical rightwing beliefs breed. Right now in California the left wing is mostly enfolded within the political process. But if the anti-vaxxers coincide with distrustful radicals on the left and the right, and BOTH depart from the public school system, and thus all civic education, what are we going to end up with here? This could be another Tea Party state when all is said and done - neither traditional Conservatives or Democrats because we attempted to filter people of varying beliefs out of the political process instead of dealing with the vagaries of the history that created them.

[daredtowork]

24. I 100% support

putting the facts out there for people to learn as you are doing here.

Despite Agnosticsherbet's cheap rhetorical tactics, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I'm an anti-bullier with an appreciation for the historical context for anti-vaxxing beliefs. I want the policy decisions to be made as a result of discussion and mutual respect, not high-handed rhetoric and slinging of insults.

[CanadaexPat]

3. So when Rick Perry is President,

He can mandate all kinds of vaccines to help out his Pharma friends.

[Agnosticsherbet]

5. Rick Perry is never going to be Presdient. He is not governor of California.

So I am not sure where your comment comes from.

But public health is a concern to all Americans, and requiring all Parents to vaccinate their children, unless the child is too ill to be vaccinated, is part of a good healthcare system, which I suspect the Republican nominee and modern conservatives will oppose.

[antiquie]

4. SB-277 Public health: vaccinations.(2015-2016)

SECTION 1.
Section 48980.5 is added to the Education Code, to read:

48980.5.
The notification required pursuant to Section 48980 shall also include the immunization rates for the school in which a pupil is enrolled for each of the immunizations required pursuant to Section 120335 of the Health and Safety Code.

SEC. 2.
Section 120325 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:

120325.
In enacting this chapter, but excluding Section 120380, and in enacting Sections 120400, 120405, 120410, and 120415, it is the intent of the Legislature to provide:
(a) A means for the eventual achievement of total immunization of appropriate age groups against the following childhood diseases:
(1) Diphtheria.
(2) Hepatitis B.
(3) Haemophilus influenzae type b.
(4) Measles.
(5) Mumps.
(6) Pertussis (whooping cough).
(7) Poliomyelitis.
(8) Rubella.
(9) Tetanus.
(10) Varicella (chickenpox).
(11) Any other disease deemed appropriate by the department, taking into consideration the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

[daredtowork]

11. I can smell the backfire burning

California doesn't have the same cultural/intellectual profile as West Virginia or Mississippi. What we do have is a thriving population of independent spirits and creative thinkers that combine the rebellious flavor of the 60s with the sense they are pioneers of the future. And, yes, sometimes that creative spirit weaves a world of dumb.

Did I mention everyone over 40 comes from a generation that was hard-wired not to trust big science (especially when inflicted by big corporations, big agriculture, big pharma, big govt - anything big will treat people like ants and be run by mysterious agendas)?

Taking away freedom of choice in this matter - especially when it involves injecting conspiracy-mongering substances in people's bodies is bad juju. There will almost certainly be a Heroic Resistance and theories about who benefited from the law. Worse, as a personal liberty issue, it could become a political swing issue. Think rise of a Nader-like splinter third party, when California has been a reliably Democratic State for years!

Before people pile on me again, I'm fully vaccinated and get all my flu shots. Also my graduate degree was initially in History of Science. Leonard Nimoy rocked. I'm not here to bash science. I've been trying to offer people some insight about my Silent Spring generation that will probably, at this point, pop up as an unpleasant surprise.

/Cassandra. Again.

[Agnosticsherbet]

12. Over 40, and grew up trusting science and opposed to rampant anti-intellectualism

and New Age Woo.

Leonard Nimoy had a masters degree in education, and was awarded an honorary degree in 2012 from Boston University. A gifted actor, he played a scientist on television.

Californing is not taking away freedom of choice. It is moving in a collective way to protect children and adults.

[daredtowork]

13. That's you.

I'm just saying, don't be surprised by what's not you. Distrust of big science was also a thing in your age group.

[Agnosticsherbet]

14. My age group watched the moon launches in awe, saw Cancer go from a death sentence to a curable

and treatable disease. We saw vaccinations wipe out childhood diseases that decimated families when I was a child.

There are some on the religious and conservative right who do not trust science, but that is a problem with a belief system and not limited to any age group.

We also have a few new agers, natural living enthusiasts, and conspiracy theorists but those, like religion, are belief systems and not limited to my age group.

[daredtowork]

15. They also saw

Three mile island, the Cuban Missile Crisis and other Cold War atomic brinksmanship, and birth defects from pesticides. They learned about questionable moments in bioethics like the Tuskegee Experiments, the history of eugenics in the U.S., and the psychological experiments of the 60s and 70s. They watched movies like the China Syndrome, Silkwood, and Fail Safe.

The last century has revealed many miracles of science, but it has also revealed many horrors of science as well. You can mock anti-vaxxers all you want (by the way - I don't believe anti-vax beliefs should be taken on as it's own belief system but rather be recognized in context in a variety of larger belief systems), but there are valid components of Twentieth Century culture which cultivated this particular strain of belief.

Again, this is not my belief and I'm not advocating it. I just have the gut feeling that the tone that has been taken toward "anti-vaxxers" is wrong, given the historic origins of those beliefs, and I suspect the backlash is going to hit the Democrats if we insist on being hardliners against a background of Fox "we're the good parent who wants to protect you from big government overreach...".

[Agnosticsherbet]

16. anti-vaxers and golobal warming deniers are anti-intellectual's

There is zero difference in the source of those poisonous beliefs.

I have family members who died from childhood diseases, and we visited their graves on every memorial day as a child. I had a couple of friends that caught polio and suffered for the rest of their lives.

The tone taken towards anti-vaxers should be exactly the same as that taken to global warming deniers.

[daredtowork]

17. My housemate had polio

And I know several other people who had it as well, some of whom were disabled by it. But children with birth defects from pesticides also suffered for the rest of their lives. There is no point in matching "pulling heartstrings" arguments here. If you're from a science background, it's easy to tell the difference between things that are well-tested and things that we may have rushed to market. However, the layperson can't tell the difference between these things, and history does provide a lot of reasons to be wary, if not outright skeptical about the unexpected consequences of "scientific" decisions. That side of human experience should be respected.

[Agnosticsherbet]

18. Anti-intellectualism is the issue.

Scientists do not rush things to the market. That is a corporate bottom line issue. Science and corporate board decisions should not be confused.

So I trust doctors, scientists, and the scientific method. I don't confuse them with corporate decisions.

Vaccination is proven science. The study that led to the anti-vax craze has been proven a fraud.

[daredtowork]

19. Scientists rush things to market all the time

That's why the FDA gets to come down with the humongous fines, and big pharma lawyers do a thriving business.

Also "vaccination" is a process. Which vaccine are we talking about? It's the content of the vaccinations that people dispute.

In the future the content of a vaccine might be rushed in response to an outbreak. After the outbreak, people might still fall under this "no opt out" law, and then they could suffer from some unknown side effects. The lawsuits and backlash from those side effects could dismantle the law, and then people would not only be vulnerable to measles all over again - there would be an electorate on the defensive about even having a discussion about vaccinations.

I studied history as a student, I can't help but think in historical ways. The way that we are behaving now in jamming vaccines down people's throats against such a rich. multivariant historical context is a recipe for backlash - and I'm sure it's going to come as an "utter surprise" to the decision-makers. If even one person dies in California from some sort of freak vaccine reaction after that law is implemented, their name is going to rhyme with Benghazi.

[antiquie]

20. I am so glad to be living in an alternate universe. ~ nt

[daredtowork]

21. lol nt

[Agnosticsherbet]

22. "If every person in California dies from some sort of freak vaccine reaction..." You are

an anti-vaxer.

When you wrote this, "Again, this is not my belief and I'm not advocating it." you were not being accurate with your statement of belief. Since anti-vaxx is your belief system, you should state it openly, be proud of it, and not claim you believe something else in order to pass of an argument based on nothing.

History is not science. You are not thinking in "historical ways." It is clear that you know exactly nothing about the science of vaccinations, public health policy behind vaccinations, or the health benefits of vaccination, or anything about the scientific method, or science.

It is also clear that you are not very proud of those ideas because start out by claiming you believe something else.

[daredtowork]

23. Geez

Please don't even start with the bullying approach on me. I will just think of you as a malicious mean-spirited schmuck in return. Good luck with forwarding that debate.

History is based on HISTORY - the experiences that people have had over time. People tend to base their beliefs on that. In my above posts, I names some of the historical ways people have developed those beliefs since World War II. By the way, I forgot to mention World War II itself and the likening of the Holocaust to a bureaucratic process, the gas chambers as technology, and Mengele's scientific experiments. Those are all historical experiences that people have in their collective memories!

When you say "History is not science. Your are not thinking in 'historical ways'." - you actually start to sound very confused. What are you talking about? Do I make a claim that history is science? Where is the proof that my examples from history are not thinking in historical ways (or, for that matter, my Ph.D. candidacy in History - the M.A. of which was in History of Science - counts for nothing here). Historical claims have nothing to do with scientific claims - but BOTH are claims that need to be considered in the realm of politics.

You can stoop to petty name-calling if you wish, but I will continue to support respecting humanistic and historical context in any considerations of political policy, and that includes science policy.

[Agnosticsherbet]

26. Then don't misrepresent yourelf with me or I might think.

that what your words have absolutely no basis in fact. That would be telling a lie, wouldn't it?

And as to the holocaust. I had relatives that died in those gas chambers. Pulling that argument shows me how completely bereft of fact, ethics, and morals your arguments are.

So you can take your anti-intellectual, bogus, completely false arguments back to fantasy land.

The discussion is about science, which you know nothing about.

False, pseudo-religious claims have no place in a discussion about real science.

[daredtowork]

27. I didn't

I said I wasn't an anti-vaxxer and am vaccinated myself. You LABEL me as an anti-vaxxer because I oppose the way this California law is being implemented, and indeed the wave of bullying that has gone on around this whole vaccination issue. You can can continue to wring your hands, your legs, all ten fingers, all ten toes, and try to overwrite reality whenever someone disagrees with you.

All I've ever done any of my comments on this matter, and all I will continue to do, is ask for some respect for the historical context which encouraged more than a little distrust of Big Science among lay people since WWII. This is just a cultural fact, and anti-vaxxers spring from that cultural fact.

Politics unfortunately has to deal with people and their histories as well as "science". That's also a fact.

Keep on bloviating: you can't change history, and you can't change the facts.

[Agnosticsherbet]

28. You make anti-vaxx arguments and suggest all californians might die from

a vaccine. You are an anti-vaxxer, no matter what you claim. You claims lack any basis in reality.

Vaccination is an important liberal public health policy because protecting public health is a good liberal health policy.

Your arguments lack any intellectual content and reek of conspiracy theories.

West Virginia's Republican Congress and Mississippi's Republican government can handle public health as they choose. They won't do anything because the actions of Republicans show they don't give a flying fuck about public health.

In California we worked hard to elect a liberal government because we want good public health policy based on sound science.

You don't want that. I get it. I suggest you not move to california where sound science and good government policy is used to help people in need.

[daredtowork]

29. For the last few days

there has been an OP on DU about a politician's wife who died from a freak vaccine reaction, though he is still heroically still advocating for vaccines. There's your factual example.

The historical context I gave you did indeed happen in reality despite your magical thinking that my claims "lack any basis in reality".

"Conspiracy theories" are a form of mythology, i.e. culture. Culture is part of the human experience. i.e. history. That's real. Get used to it.

Look around a minute: I frequently post in the California group because I live in California. I'm commenting on government policy that affects me.

It's pathetic that you think anyone who doesn't agree with you must be an "anti-vaxxer". But you are just screaming nonsensically into the wind. Calling me an anti-vaxxer doesn't make me one.

[Agnosticsherbet]

30. All of California is not a possibility. It is conpsircy theory on steroids.

You are an anti-vaxxer clearly opposed to scinence.

Bye.

[daredtowork]

31. How many times do I have to say I'm not an anti-vaxxer

Yet you keep bludgeoning me with this as if saying it enough times will make it true.

And I HAVE A DEGREE IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE.