SC Senate bill bans vaccine mandates, would spread distrust | Editorials – The Post and Courier

Dont worry, they said; this is just about that hyper-politicized vaccine that Donald Trump rushed into development and approval to fight the hyper-politicized pandemic. Its not going to affect real vaccines that everybody trusts.

Only theres no such thing as a vaccine everybody trusts, because anti-vaxxers on the left worked for decades to convince the gullible and frightened that routine childhood vaccines can cause autism. Then they were joined by anti-vaxxers on the right, and together they worked to undermine confidence in the life-saving shots that transformed medicine by eradicating smallpox, by saving generations of children from the crippling effects of polio and by turning chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis from killers into risks that can be managed and that arent even risks as long as we dont listen to all the lies about vaccines.

And sure enough, they were wrong. Measles, a highly contagious virus that can lead to pneumonia and encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, was officially eradicated in the United States two decades ago, but there are still occasional outbreaks, mainly associated with international travel and large clusters of unvaccinated people.

In December, the CDC began tracking a significant measles outbreak; by last week, it had grown to 45 cases in 17 jurisdictions, with the largest cluster in Florida, where the states surgeon general told parents they didnt have to follow the standard procedure of keeping their unvaccinated children out of school if they didnt want to.

And the National Conference of State Legislatures reports that rates of routine vaccinations for kindergartners declined during the pandemic nationwide. In many cases, the reasons had more to do with logistics than vaccine hesitancy, but the rates still hadnt recovered by the 2022-23 school year. After kindergarten coverage held steady nationally for a decade at 95% for standard vaccines; it dipped to 93% last year. That might not sound like a big deal, but it reflects an increase of 250,000 unvaccinated kids, and a significant increase in the chance that a given community will have insufficient herd immunity to prevent an outbreak.

Its against this backdrop that a S.C. Senate Medical Affairs subcommittee meets this morning to double-down on a two-year law the Legislature passed in 2022 to prohibit government and even private businesses from requiring their employees or customers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

As the S.C. Daily Gazette reports, S.975 would extend those restrictions indefinitely and expand them: Employers couldnt require employees to get any novel vaccine one that hasnt been fully approved by the FDA or that was approved within the previous 10 years. Violators would face a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison for first offense and up to $5,000 and five years for the third offense. At the same time, the bill would reduce the penalty for people who violate quarantine orders when theyre carrying a highly infectious disease.

Perhaps more worrisome, the bill also would restrict the states public health agency from helping South Carolinians voluntarily receive that future vaccination against that future pandemic.

Well set aside the inaccurate claims that supporters made at a recent public hearing about supposed Washington mandates during the COVID pandemic, since people who are determined to believe those lies arent going to be deterred by facts. Well also set aside the jaw-dropping hypocrisy of legislators in a state that worships at the altar of free enterprise telling businesses they cant protect themselves from the cost of a virus racing through their workforce. Instead, well just focus on the danger this legislation poses to all of us.

The most obvious thing it does is make it more difficult for us to protect ourselves, by cutting the states health department out of the distribution of that next vaccine for that next pandemic.

Less obvious but potentially even more dangerous is what it would do to help the spread of measles, polio, tetanus, rubella, pertussis and the other preventable diseases that fewer kids already are getting vaccinated against.

S.975 and similar bills, and all the testimony that goes into those bills, help spread these diseases by elevating wholly discredited claims that vaccines are dangerous, further eroding the publics trust in physicians and giving people permission to opt out of all of their obligations to society. Starting but not ending with vaccinations.

Yes, some people read all the crazy stuff on social media and believe that childhood vaccines cause autism or whatever the snake-oil salesmen are selling these days. Mostly, though, the people who are refusing to vaccinate their kids, who are refusing to get a flu shot, who are refusing to get a COVID shot simply misunderstand what it means to live in a free society with an emphasis on society and object to anyone telling them what to do.

It would be fine if they lived alone in the woods and grew their own food and never came into contact with others, just as it would be fine for them to refuse to take drug tests or IQ tests or any other tests a potential employer might require since they wouldnt have an employer. It would be fine for them to not get a drivers license and with it the agreement to obey traffic laws since they wouldnt be driving on our roads.

But when people live in a civil society, where their actions can affect everyone around them, they have a moral obligation to protect others from themselves. And its perfectly appropriate for them to have a legal or contractual obligation as well.

Whats not appropriate is for our Legislature to appease cantankerous people by saying the rest of society cant enforce those obligations on them.

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SC Senate bill bans vaccine mandates, would spread distrust | Editorials - The Post and Courier