Ranting On...California's New Vaccination Law

Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA)

Hate is a strong word.  It's one that I use probably more liberally than I should, but the reality is that there are few people or groups of people I hate.  Bigots, but we all hate those.  Same with dictators and violent criminals.  Donald Trump and Perez Hilton, but again, they're on pretty much everyone's list.  New parents who turn into condescending jerks (again, we all hate those, though we usually whisper about it in hushed circles).  But for me there are few people that top the list higher than anti-vaccination advocates.  I loathe them and have written about them more extensively here in the past (any time that Jenny McCarthy, the only other celebrity who rivals Trump and Hilton on my "loathe" list, is in the news for example).  However, this past week's legislation pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown in California, removing religious and personal belief exemptions from parents who want to not vaccinate their children but sill allow them in schools, has brought vaccination back into the public debate and since we haven't done anything very political this week, I figured it would be a fine time to have that discussion.

Let's start this out right now before we start to rationally discuss the logistics of this argument: people who don't vaccinate their children are stupid.  The reality is that vaccinations have been proven to not contain mercury (the CDC has stated so repeatedly) and that doctor after doctor after doctor has stated publicly that there is no correlation between vaccination and autism or colitis, and Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper has been disproved so many times that it borders on the redundant to even bring the subject up, and yet people continue to have doubts about the veracity of the entire medical community's research.  These are the same people who say climate change is a myth and that leprechauns stole their car keys.  They are idiots who will believe anything if they read it on the internet.  The reality is that the MMR vaccine saves lives, causing children to not die from measles and mumps.  That's why everyone should continue to take it, and why it is so important for all children to be vaccinated.

As a result of the idiocy surrounding these anti-vaccination laws, measles outbreaks have grown in recent years, particularly in California where dense tourist destinations such as theme parks and beaches make contact between those too young to receive vaccination and those that may be old enough to be vaccinated but are not considerably more likely.  California's law, it should be noted, is not the first state to ban religious and personal belief exemptions; West Virginia and Mississippi have similar such bans (and it should be noted that Mississippi has the highest rate of immunization of any state, perhaps the only list I've ever seen Mississippi lead that is a good thing in all my years of stats hunting).  Considering its enormous population and its influence as the largest state in the country, I am curious to see whether this law starts something of a movement.

The bigger question is "is this a movement worth endorsing," and I'm going to argue that it is.  The reality is that we all have freedoms in this country, including freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and I'm usually loathe to infringe on such a freedom (for the record, considering the civil liberties involved in this law, I suspect that the Supreme Court may have a final say in this before everything is said and done), but there are exemptions and I think a major public safety risk is one of them.  The reality is that you have every right not to immunize your child or yourself, but you must also run the risks associated with such a decision and live with the consequences.  If you or your child cause another person, likely an infant too young to receive the vaccine, to become sick or die, you should be held culpable.  You should be held financially responsible if it is the same virus that you or your child is held, and should be tried for killing another person if you knowingly put an unvaccinated child into the public without regard for the public's safety.  In my opinion it's the same thing as leaving a loaded weapon out on your front yard or lighting a fire in a public space without any regard for control-you are responsible for creating that dangerous situation, and should be tried accordingly if your actions result in the sickness or death of another individual.

It should be noted in this country that we do regulate potentially dangerous or violent actions in order to protect the public safety, which is essentially what this amounts to doing.  We allow religious practices to take place as long as they don't infringe on the larger public safety (human sacrifices are a no-no, even if some religious cultures have allowed them in the past, for example).  We also regulate who can own guns, where you can start fires, drug usage, and set parameters around who can drive a car and in what capacity.  Forcing vaccinations before entering public education is a similarly-themed sort of action.  We don't cry afoul when someone can't use heroin or when someone who is inebriated wants to drive a car because of the larger good, even though technically someone's freedoms are being infringed upon. Mandatory vaccination laws, in my opinion, are in the same bucket.

I might have some sympathy here if access to vaccines was more difficult, but this is not the case.  All major insurance companies, as well as the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid cover childhood immunizations, so money should not be an issue here.  As a result, in my opinion the only real reason that someone should be waived of the vaccination requirement is a medical condition precluding them from getting the vaccination (such as an allergy to one of the ingredients within the vaccination).  Otherwise, this makes sense.  I'm tired of having the anti-science community putting our lives in jeopardy because of ignorance.  And so I applaud Gov. Brown and the California legislature for their actions with this law.