Republicans Trying to Repeal Vax Mandates for Every Disease - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15194545
One of the puzzling things about opponents of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, in the minds of some exasperated liberals and leftists, is their acceptance of vaccine mandates for every other disease. If you feel that coercing people into getting vaccinated is an unacceptable government overreach, those liberals and leftists ask, wouldn’t you be equally upset at the vaccine mandates for polio, measles, and many others that have been in place in every state in the country since last century?

Republican officials have realized this contradiction and have been working to iron it out — not by rethinking their vehement opposition to the COVID mandates and trying to persuade their followers, mind you. Instead, GOP legislators around the country have tried to resolve this inconsistency by broadening their anti-mandate stance and trying to weaken government and private sector immunization requirements for a host of other infectious diseases beyond COVID.
Three Victories for Disease

As of the time of writing, a survey of bills listed by the National Conference of State Legislatures shows there are at least nine bills pending in seven states that weaken or outright bar vaccine mandates for diseases beyond coronavirus, while three such bills have already been signed into law. Two of those are in Montana, long a hotbed of vaccine hesitancy — ironically, given that the state produced one of the world’s most prolific and important vaccine creators.

The most sweeping is Montana House Bill 702, which became law in May and effectively turns vaccination status into a protected class, barring businesses and government entities from “discriminating” against the unvaccinated by refusing to serve or employ them. By barring even private sector employers from requiring any type of immunization, Montana is unique in the country. The law has already caused consternation among the state’s hospitals, who, until the bill’s passage, required their employees to get the suite of vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including for the flu, measles, and chickenpox.

Medical professionals and entities like the Montana Hospital Association (MHA) have warned that the law will make doctors and patients less safe, given that places filled with sick people are prime spots for the transmission of various diseases, and they fear it hampers the out-of-state recruitment of workers that Montana’s health sector relies on. Besides this, with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) requiring health care facilities to vaccinate their staff in order to get federal funding, MHA president Rich Rasmussen warned that all of the state’s hospitals are in financial peril, depending on how the CMS chooses to navigate the issue.

Another bill signed into law one month earlier, HB 334, makes it easier for students to get medical exemptions for public school mandates by expanding which health care providers can issue them, barring the disclosure of a student’s exemptions, and precluding the state’s public health authority from putting any more restrictions on those mandates. The same Republican legislator, Jennifer Carlson, is the leading sponsor of both.

This isn’t something that cropped up with the emergence of COVID. During a 2015 measles outbreak, Montana’s Republican-controlled house of representatives passed a bill making it easier for parents to opt their kids out of compulsory vaccines; four years later, three more bills aimed at weakening these requirements were defeated. It seems that the onset of the pandemic, which has killed more than two thousand of the state’s one million residents, paradoxically helped Montana Republicans finally get such provisions over the line, thanks to a successful nationwide effort by GOP officials to turn surviving the pandemic into a partisan issue, complete with a deluge of right-wing propaganda against vaccines.

The other law that takes aim at mandates for vaccines beyond COVID was passed in Kentucky in March. Passed at the last moment before the Democratic governor could step in and veto it, the law adds a “conscientiously held belief” exemption to mandatory vaccinations of any kind, specifically during an epidemic. Believe it or not, this is a more “moderate,” compromise version of the original bill, which left out the epidemic clause and gave wider leeway to parents to get their kids into school without getting the required vaccinations — the reason it was fiercely opposed by alarmed medical experts and health agencies.

Oregon, meanwhile, is way ahead of the rest of the country: It passed a law prohibiting health care facilities from mandating vaccines for employees all the way back in 1989. One of its legislative sponsors now says he regrets supporting it, because “the context has changed dramatically” — a chilling cautionary tale for the current legislative efforts to weaken immunization requirements.
Live Free to Die

Several other states are seeing similar, concerted pushes to roll back vaccine mandates more broadly.

In Idaho, Republicans have been brainstorming anti-mandate ideas, ranging from banning all vaccine requirements even in emergencies and defining and treating them as assault to barring all immunizations and other medical procedures as conditions of employment. One proposal, to require private employers to include an opt-out for any vaccine policies, supposedly has the backing of anywhere between twenty-three and thirty-five state house members, according to the GOP legislators behind the proposal. Meanwhile, HB 140, a bill barring state and local governments from contracting with companies that “discriminate” against unvaccinated workers, passed the house forty-nine to twenty-one in February and has been sitting in a senate committee ever since.

In Nebraska, residents filled out a legislative hearing room and hallway in February in support of Legislative Bill 643, a bill giving all citizens the right to turn down a government-mandated vaccine order, including the right for parents to opt their dependents out of vaccination and employers to do the same for their workers. The then president of the Nebraska Medical Association, Dr Michelle Walsh, was a lonely voice against the measure, as speaker after speaker railed against vaccines and their supposed dangers.

Indiana is likewise seeing ongoing attempts to weaken its immunization requirements more broadly. A bill banning employee mandates for any vaccines was killed by legislative leaders earlier this year, but five hundred of the bill’s supporters rallied in front of the statehouse in September calling for new measures — with three Republican legislators in attendance, two of them speakers. One of the movement’s leaders, former attorney Leah Wilson, called for a bill to turn vaccination status into a protected class in the state.

It’s not only solidly red states where Republicans are taking aim at vaccine requirements. In Pennsylvania, the Right to Refuse Act has been making its way through the state house of representatives, a bill that would outlaw hospitals’ long-running requirements for vaccination as a condition of employment, along with those of any other employer. A more obscure bill, Senate Bill 471, or the Medical Freedom Act, abolishes vaccine mandates as a condition of employment, accessing public schools, and more, and was introduced at the start of this year.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of Republican-led attempts to weaken successful and long-standing immunization measures. In Tennessee, a bill barring school districts and other government entities from putting in place vaccine requirements was deferred to the 2022 legislative session. In Texas, two separate bills barring employment discrimination against the unvaccinated were introduced in September. And in Florida, the GOP’s top-ranking senator on health care policy has recently called for a “review” of all mandates, including those for polio, mumps, and rubella, while one of his colleagues in the state house filed a bill in August to repeal state laws allowing for mandatory vaccinations during an emergency.
Try and Try Again

Other states have seen near misses, with similar efforts gaining momentum before being thwarted.

Ohio saw a tug-of-war throughout the year over an expansive GOP bill that would have abolished employer mandates for all vaccines, repealed an existing law requiring college students living in on-campus housing to be vaccinated for hepatitis B and meningitis, and forced schools and childcare centers to tell parents about exemptions to immunization requirements. Those exemptions would have been significantly broadened by the bill, which called for only a written or verbal declaration from the parent that their child has natural immunity, a medical contraindication, or simply “reasons of conscience” to avoid the vaccine.

As in other red states, hundreds of the bill’s backers came to the statehouse in August as the bill was being debated, even as horrified health care professionals and institutions warned it could “reverse decades of immunity from life-threatening, but vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, hepatitis, meningitis and tuberculosis.” Even after legislative leaders paused the bill’s progress, its right-wing backers tried to force a floor vote in September via discharge petition, ultimately getting only seven out of the necessary fifty signatures. Leadership then put forward an alternative, narrower bill taking aim only at the COVID vaccine, which has also now stalled.

In North Carolina, hundreds of supporters of a similar bill barring employer- and government-enforced mandates likewise rallied outside the state’s general assembly in May, with one speaker comparing those who refuse vaccines to African Americans who were discriminated against under Jim Crow. That bill would have ended the state’s long-standing vaccine mandate for public schools, as well as barred any employer mandates and allowed anyone to opt out of any other vaccine mandate without detailing their objections. It was eventually watered down, and a narrower anti-mandate bill focusing only on the COVID vaccine was signed into law.

Similarly, in New Hampshire, a bill originally banning any form of compulsory immunization was steadily watered down, adding exceptions for schools and childcare facilities, and for employer mandates under certain conditions. The final version signed into law narrowed the mandate ban to the COVID vaccine.
The Pro-Disease Party

On the one hand, the small number of bills that have actually passed and the far greater number that have been defeated or simply stalled is an encouraging sign, even though one has to wonder if this outcome would have been the same without the concerted local business opposition to many of them.

On the other hand, the number, variety, and geographic spread of such bills, as well as the not-insignificant legislative and grassroots support they have garnered, is a troubling sign for the direction of the country’s shifting center of political gravity. Republican officials and the powerful oligarchic propaganda machine behind them have taken the previously fringe anti-vax movement and are slowly turning it into a mainstream position within the GOP. Paradoxically, these mounting efforts to roll back long-standing public health measures responsible for suppressing a variety of vicious diseases have only been possible thanks to a pandemic that has killed nearly 720,000 Americans and counting.

Maybe most appalling, the lawmakers behind these bills openly say they believe in the science of vaccines, and that they’ve gotten their COVID shots, even as they work to help this pandemic and other infectious diseases tear through the country. They’re fully aware they’re assisting a movement opposed to centuries of medical science and devoted to undermining decades of national public health consensus, but for craven political reasons have decided it’s worth it. You can’t get a better summary of the deadly nihilism at the heart of the modern Republican project, and the threat it poses to all ordinary working people, than that.


They've completely lost their minds.
#15194594
Heisenberg wrote:The GOP is the world's stupidest death cult. I genuinely have more respect for Al Qaeda.

:lol: You see you've exposed yourself. Real (aka radical) Islamic groups have a long chequered history of opposition and disruption of vaccine programmes. Note this predates Barack Hussein Obama's fake vaccine programme in Pakistan. The Taliban have also undermined the Covid vaccination programme in Afghanistan although more recently they are going along with it, or pretending to go along with it in order to get governmental legitimacy. This demonstrates what I've said from the beginning, this is about hate, not about saving lives or health. Liberal/ lefties were demanding compulsory vaccinations before they had even been invented.

Preferring Al Qaeda to the Republicans is not a rationale response, its an emotional reaction in a culture war, a culture war where people who just want to think for themselves and make their own choices get run down. I've never said no one should social distance, I've never said no should isolate. I've never said no one should wear masks. I've never said that no one should take vaccines. I've never said that tests should never be used in any circumstance. But I'm not going to have no nothing liberals telling me how to manage my life.

I've had Covid, the symptoms were milder than a cold, but they went on for a few weeks. There's no doubt that the Chinese government designed an effective weapon in Covid-19 that seriously challenges the human immune system. I've never had flu, I virtually never get a cold. I'm healthy precisely because I keep interference in my body by doctors to an absolute minimum. I take virtually no medical drugs, a local anaesthetic and 9 ibuprofen in the last 20 years. In the last 20 years I haven't taken recreational drugs, drunk more than 4 or 5 units of alcohol in total or smoked tobacco.
#15194620
Saeko wrote:They've completely lost their minds.


Why stop at vaccines. Why is the government putting Folic acid on our cereals/bread? Or Vitamin D on our milk? O fucking Iodine on our salt. Why do we have to drink water that comes with chlorine.... CHLORINE! Isn't chlorine a poison?
Fokin idiots.
I guess this is time for me to start brushing up on nearly-extinct diseases. :lol:
#15194621
XogGyux wrote:Why stop at vaccines. Why is the government putting Folic acid on our cereals/bread? Or Vitamin D on our milk? O fucking Iodine on our salt. Why do we have to drink water that comes with chlorine.... CHLORINE! Isn't chlorine a poison?
Fokin idiots.
I guess this is time for me to start brushing up on nearly-extinct diseases. :lol:

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#15194624
Heisenberg wrote:The GOP is the world's stupidest death cult.


I thought the Chinese Communist Party is the bigger stupid death cult (their membership is 2.5 times the GOP)

Although I share the "I respect Al Qaeda more" part. In fact I'd also include ISIL or even the Nazis in the statement.
#15194722
Potemkin wrote:No they haven't, they're just converts to Libertarianism.... oh, wait, that's the same thing, isn't it? Never mind. :|

To be fair , not even all right-libertarians are so awfully absurd as to oppose vaccine mandates . For some examples , here are a couple articles . https://www.voanews.com/a/covid-19-pandemic_why-some-libertarians-support-vaccine-mandates/6209163.html , https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/why-mandatory-vaccination-is-not-opposed-to-libertarian-principles
#15194749
Heisenberg wrote:@Rich I'm not reading all that. I'm happy for you though, or sorry that happened

:lol: Oh I'm sorry was 299 words to in only 3 paragraphs too intellectually challenging. Don't worry I'll repeat what I said in more byte size chunks for you. No seriously when people start pretending that they're ignoring me, I know my arguments are cutting through and my opponents have no credible response.

Patrickov wrote:Although I share the "I respect Al Qaeda more" part. In fact I'd also include ISIL or even the Nazis in the statement.

As I said above, yet again Lockdown Liberals reveal their staggering ignorance. When have Al Qaeda affiliates, ISIS or their allies have actually supported vaccine mandates? In many cases they have actively sabotaged or hindered vaccine programmes and they were doing this before President Obama's fake Hepatitus B vaccine programme.
#15194797
Rich wrote: Oh I'm sorry was 299 words to in only 3 paragraphs too intellectually challenging. Don't worry I'll repeat what I said in more byte size chunks for you. No seriously when people start pretending that they're ignoring me, I know my arguments are cutting through and my opponents have no credible response.

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Rich wrote:As I said above, yet again Lockdown Liberals reveal their staggering ignorance. When have Al Qaeda affiliates, ISIS or their allies have actually supported vaccine mandates?

Would you care to point out where I said they did? :lol:
#15194803
I guess I get both sides of it. I get the obvious concerns of public health and safety, and the libertarian argument.

Here's the thing: requiring a vaccine is requiring violence to be committed upon your physical body (metal syringe piercing the skin and the injection of a medical fluid into the body). In what circumstances should a person be required to be subjected to this medical procedure?

I would think a private employer should be allowed to require it for workers as a condition of employment before they start working. Both parties have full informed consent prior to entering the contract, and an employee is free to refuse and find another job. I'm not sure whether or not an employer should be allowed to make it a requirement after an employment contract has already been signed.

Making it a requirement to attend public schools is another controversial issue. It may harm public safety if not required. On the other hand, if your kid has their vaccines are they at risk for harm around children who aren't?
#15194806
Unthinking Majority wrote:
Here's the thing: requiring a vaccine is requiring violence to be committed upon your physical body (metal syringe piercing the skin and the injection of a medical fluid into the body). In what circumstances should a person be required to be subjected to this medical procedure?

I wonder if you feel this strongly about circumcision (surgically removing a piece of an infant's body) or piercing a child's earlobes. :lol:
Listen, you have an ally on me when it comes to circumcision because it is a permanent disfigurement on a human. I might even buy the piercing part although i don't feel as strong as this is more reversible and/or not nearly as impactful. However, not all injections and/or temporary pain = violence. Are you suggesting that the mass vaccination campaigns that have saved millions of kids worldwide of often-deadly diseases such as poliomyelitis, tetanus, meningitis, pertussis, etc are a form of mass violence? :lol: I don't buy into your premise.
I'm not sure whether or not an employer should be allowed to make it a requirement after an employment contract has already been signed.

Well, they do it all the time, why would vaccinations be an exception. All the contracts that I have had for my jobs have had quite fabulous terms for the employers to end the relationship unilaterally with minimal harm to them, often time with very little warning, and I work in an industry that I can only assume contracts are favorable to the employee compared to the "average" contract given the highly specialized nature of my job and the scarcity of physicians. I can only imagine that for a more "disposable" job, the terms are 10x worse for the employee.
#15194829
XogGyux wrote:I wonder if you feel this strongly about circumcision (surgically removing a piece of an infant's body) or piercing a child's earlobes. :lol:
Listen, you have an ally on me when it comes to circumcision because it is a permanent disfigurement on a human. I might even buy the piercing part although i don't feel as strong as this is more reversible and/or not nearly as impactful. However, not all injections and/or temporary pain = violence. Are you suggesting that the mass vaccination campaigns that have saved millions of kids worldwide of often-deadly diseases such as poliomyelitis, tetanus, meningitis, pertussis, etc are a form of mass violence? :lol: I don't buy into your premise.

No I didn't argue that. There's a distinction between willful private actors vs government mandates vs what you're saying, which is a parent making a medical decision for their child re: vaccines or circumcision.

Forcing someone to get an injection, or forcing a child to get it without their parent's consent, is a form of physical violence, that's not really arguable. What's arguable is when it's appropriate to do so. As a health practitioner I'm sure you learned about informed consent and the ethics around it.

I would assume many mass vaccination campaigns have been voluntary, maybe in quite a few countries they were government mandated.

We're also in an emergency situation that has meant many basic liberties we normally have have been overriden, usually rightly so, in the name of health and safety, so that has to be included in the calculation as well.

Well, they do it all the time, why would vaccinations be an exception. All the contracts that I have had for my jobs have had quite fabulous terms for the employers to end the relationship unilaterally with minimal harm to them, often time with very little warning, and I work in an industry that I can only assume contracts are favorable to the employee compared to the "average" contract given the highly specialized nature of my job and the scarcity of physicians. I can only imagine that for a more "disposable" job, the terms are 10x worse for the employee.

Anyone who signs a contract has to live up to the terms they agreed to. If that includes getting vaccinations then that's fine, because it involves informed consent of both parties. It's trickier if you signed your contract and a few years later your employer suddenly comes up to you and says "We now require you to have medicine injected into your body or you're fired". Not exactly sure what your point is.

I'm not even saying such requirements are wrong, i'm just laying out the arguments and ethical questions.
#15194880
Unthinking Majority wrote:I would think a private employer should be allowed to require it for workers as a condition of employment before they start working. Both parties have full informed consent prior to entering the contract, and an employee is free to refuse and find another job.


Those having financial burden (of, say, needing to feed one's own family) do not have the freedom as you state here.
#15195185
One of the puzzling things about opponents of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, in the minds of some exasperated liberals and leftists, is their acceptance of vaccine mandates for every other disease.


There is absolutely nothing puzzling about that at all. Other such mandates actually make medical sense.

Enforcing vaccines for everybody however has no medical value at all at containing the disease once it has spread over the globe, and thus it shows no effect. As it has been said by experts before and as it has been shown by recent studies, such as this one from Havard:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/

In short, once the pandemic is there, you cannot vax out of it.

In fact some of the most highly vacced countries, such as Israel, currently have huge outbreaks of covid, worse than ever before that point.

Though in the case of Israel it really doesnt help that Israel didnt get one of the classic vaccines, but one of these modern ones which are much more expensive, poorly tested, and apparently need booster shots at least every half year to actually stay effective. Booster shots which the company hasnt even adapted to the new delta variant which is now everywhere either. Not to mention that giving booster shots isnt an approved procedure either, so the chaos just gets worse.

The only reason the USA has vaccine mandates - and other countries followed suit - is so they can max profits for the pharma industry.

Its political corruption, plain and simple. Again. Not thats its any surprising for anyone following politics.

Politicians do not care about science at all. Just like they dont care about human rights. Both science and human rights are only cited if it serves their purpose. No mainstream US politician ever talks about the human rights violations of Saudi Arabia which currently runs a genocidal war, the greatest crime a nation can commit. No mainstream US politician ever gives more than lip service to the collapse of the climate, for example the Biden administrations still gives maximal support to fraking (and of course they previously promised otherwise). If it doesnt serve their purposes, like with the ongoing climate collapse, they just ignore science, just like Trump did. The only actual difference between a regular mainstream US politician and Trump is that the former has nice manners and Trump doesnt.

And if there was any other country around that would violate international law but the USA and its close allies (namely Saudi Arabia), the USA would cite international law as well as a reason for intervention.

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