Looks like GOP Congresscritters have been lining up on both sides of this one. Is there a debate in progress for the soul of the GOP, a serious fight over whether the Republicans will or won’t become an anti-vax party?
My bet is that, as a party, they’ll take a non-stand on this one, saying it would be reasonable to take either a pro-vax or anti-vax stance. Of course, that’s almost as absurd as simply being anti-vax. “Shape of Earth: Views Differ, So Let’s Teach the Controversy” is almost as dumb as believing the Earth isn’t roughly spherical.
It’s not an issue that should be politicized, and I think it’s idiotic in the extreme if the Republicans politicize it AND if they decide to back an anti-vax stance. Ironic, too, since I usually associate anti-vaxer with the kookier side of the left wing, since in my own experience it’s generally new age/green whack-a-doos that go for it. That also must have shifted to right wing whack jobs though if the Republicans are looking at it as a positive on their side.
Do you have anything similar from the period after the 2010 discovery of fraud by Wakefield and The Lancet’s retraction?
I am sure that Obama was playing politics by not condemning the anti-vaxxers, openly. Pretending that his comments, six years ago, are comparable to Christie’s three nights ago or Rand’s outright idiocy is silly.
Just no public school.* Private organizations (like Disney) can require proof of vaccination or bar you from entry. If you’re not vaccinated and travel abroad you get to spend a couple weeks in quarantine when you return. If an outbreak occurs the stupidly unvaccinated might be quarantined so they neither catch disease nor spread it.
For all purposes, those with a medical reason not to be vaccinated will not be subjected to these restrictions - the exception being when there is a medical reason to quarantine such a person.
I wondered that too, I did think that on this issue there was more than a few from the left side of things, but it seems that as usual money talks louder and it looks like wealthy conservative areas are pushing more nowadays for the anti-science and conspiracies.
That’s a fantastic idea. Looking at a brief history of outbreaks of preventable diseases, they almost always start when someone travels abroad. Or, alternatively, no passports issued to people who aren’t vaccinated.
Wakefield’s study was discredited way before 2008. In 2004, Lancet retracted the study, called it “fatally flawed”, and his paper co-authors published a retraction.
I’m not sure what the controversy is here. Both say that parents should vaccinate their kids, and all they are doing besides that is reaffirming what is already public policy: vaccines are in fact optional.
Besides, I have been told, mostly by liberals, that no one should ever be forced to go through an invasive medical procedure. Sticking needles in people is invasive.
To say that some Republicans are taking on an anti-vax stance is silly. As Will said, they are merely endorsing current law. I wasn’t aware that current law was regarded as anti-vax.
If it helps, John Boehner just said in a press conference that he believed all children should be vaccinated, and Mitch McConnell said:
"“As a victim of polio myself, I’m a big fan of vaccinations. If I were a parent who had a child who might be subject to … any particular disease I would come down on the side of vaccination,” "
Not quite, even in conservative Arizona you need to get an exemption if you want your kid to go to school. And if one insists, then the unvaccinate kids should be kept out of school, the problem is that thanks to a few doctors that broke bad a lot of people are ignoring the laws.
Funny, in reality one of the reasons why the study by Wakefield and others was pulled was that very invasive procedures (that showed the opposite of what Wakefield tried to demonstrate) were done to little kids.
What the Republicans are doing now is the reason why Jim High tower said that on some subjects “There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos” Sometimes the seemingly “middle of the road” is already a very compromised public policy.
So, most “liberals” here are taking the position that vaccinations should be voluntary? If so, why are they outraged at Rand Paul saying the same thing?
And guess what, there is quite a lot of parents who report that children who were talking and developing normally withdraw and become autistic after the vaccinations - which is what Rand Paul said. But there is no causation - it is just that there are a lot of vaccinations that are given right around the time when autism usually starts showing itself.