Vaccinations have long been required for participation in some settings. Children in public schools are required to be vaccinated against common childhood diseases, and have been for decades. It’s worth noting that the Supreme Court ruled that students who didn’t get vaccinated against the highly contagious disease smallpox could be denied acceptance into public and private schools.
Health and medical scholars have described vaccination as one of the top 10 achievements of public health in the 20th century. Yet, opposition to vaccination has existed as long as vaccination itself. Critics of vaccination have taken various positions, including opposition to the smallpox vaccine.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the anti-vaccine movement shifted its focus and became politically aligned with the far right. Worse, the image of government forcibly vaccinating Americans at gunpoint has become the stuff of fevered conspiracy theories.
Now, anti-vaxxers have become active in government. Locally, in Morro Bay, we have a candidate for mayor, Carla Wixom; two council candidates, Sarah Robison and Zara Landrum; and a candidate for our local school board, Loren Leidinger, who when asked did not answer the question, “Do you believe in vaccinations against diseases (COVID) and are you vaccinated?” This is troubling as, if elected, they could influence our government’s ability to react to future viruses.
Do we want people who refuse to respond to scientific proof that vaccinations save lives (not just theirs but huge populations) running our government?
Lynda Merill
Morro Bay
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 6, 2022.
NY Supreme Court judge just gave back the unvaccinated sanitation workers their jobs plus back pay of 40k+ cause I quote, “Covid-19 Vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission of the virus” as was the mantra of the state mandate to ‘save grandma and grandpa.’ As someone who works in the field and took the first two shots, I feel dumb founded and the governments insistence of forcing it at the price of one’s livelihood is even more frightening. What happened to “My body, my choice?” Now we see what happens when the mandate took effect, it destroyed Roe Vs Wade’s entire legal argument, rescinding womens legal right to medical privacy. Good Job, keep pushing the divide as the oligarchs avarice grow by pushing the working and middle class towards alienation and anomie.
At a time when we hear much of the left loudly proclaiming the absolute “right to bodily autonomy”, there is a certain disconnect when we also hear much of the same crowd demanding that others be punished for refusing vaccinations. The left seems strangely selective about applying this right.
The statistics tell us that getting fully vaccinated drastically reduces the number of deaths from COVID-19.
In the U.S., deaths from COVID are at 1.1% per 100,000 people. 68% of Americans are fully vaccinated. In Germany, deaths from COVID are at 0.4% per 100,000 people. 76% of Germans are fully vaccinated. In Australia, deaths from COVID are at 0.2% per 100,000 people. 84% of Australians are fully vaccinated.
If Americans had been like Germans, we would have saved 150,000 lives. If Americans had been like Australians, we would have saved nearly 200,000 lives.
It is not a vaccine. It’s a shot.
So, basically, you are saying you don’t believe in free speech or “my body, my choice”.