Georgia GOP lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit ALL vaccine requirements for children — including measles, mumps and chickenpox.
GOP opposition to vaccine mandates extends far beyond Covid-19
Right-wing politicians’ resistance to vaccine mandates is extending far beyond Covid-19 immunizations, a startling new development that carries vast implications for the future of public health.
In Idaho, a lawmaker introduced a bill that would define vaccine mandates — of any kind — as a form of assault. In Florida, a prominent state senator has called for a review of all vaccine requirements, including those for immunizations that have enjoyed wide public acceptance for decades, like polio and the measles, mumps, and rubella shot. And in Montana, the Republican governor recently signed into law a new bill that forbids businesses, including hospitals, from enforcing any vaccination requirements as a condition of employment.
The bills represent the latest wave of resistance to the Biden administration’s push to impose Covid-19 vaccine mandates for nearly all Americans. But the new, across-the-board revolt against vaccine requirements of any kind, experts told STAT, could begin to reverse a century of progress against diseases that, thanks to vaccines, are afterthoughts to most Americans.
“If you [challenge] all of the childhood vaccinations that are required, we could be in a really serious situation with outbreaks of diseases that long ago should have been eliminated in our society. We just can’t have that,” said Anthony Fauci, the government researcher and chief medical adviser to the Biden administration’s pandemic response, in a Tuesday interview at the 2021 STAT Summit.
In many cases, right-wing legislators’ resistance to vaccine mandates has been cloaked in rhetoric specific to Covid-19 immunizations. Upon closer reading, however, many of the proposals they have floated — some of which have already been signed into law — apply to all vaccines, not just the three currently authorized in the U.S. to prevent Covid.
A Tennessee proposal banning employer vaccine mandates, for one, doesn’t specify which immunizations it would apply to, meaning it effectively would apply to any requirement. Alabama’s GOP governor recently signed a new law banning any new vaccine mandates in schools, beyond those that already exist — a measure clearly aimed at Covid but with a potential impact on future immunization efforts.
“Even before the pandemic, there were worrying signs that we were beginning to lose ground in the fight to immunize children against preventable child illness, including with the widespread measles outbreaks two years ago,” Henrietta Fore, UNICEF’s executive director, said in a recent statement. “The pandemic has made a bad situation worse.”
For months, Republicans have railed against Covid-19 vaccine mandates. More recently, though, right-wing state legislators have floated proposals to ban requirements for all immunizations — not just coronavirus.
www.statnews.com
