Posted on 04/14/2020 2:18:28 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A vaccine for the novel coronavirus is likely at least a year away, but the state’s large anti-vaccine community is ready to resist it.
On Friday, just after Governor Greg Abbott declared a statewide emergency in response to the coronavirus, Sarah posted a worried plea on a local anti-vaccine Facebook group. She worried that the declaration gives the government the right to “force vaccinations” on unwilling Texans.
“If they fast-track some vaccine for coronavirus, how are all of us going to defend ourselves?” she asked. “I’ll let them vaccinate my daughter over my dead body.”
Other members of the group, Tarrant County Crunchy Mamas, chimed in.
“Hide in the floors like they hid the Jews from the Nazis,” one suggested. “Hide them in our gun safe (yes, it’s a big safe and yes, we love our guns),” said another.
Though a COVID-19 vaccine is likely still more than a year away, according to experts, concerns over mandatory vaccinations have spread throughout the anti-vaxxer community in Texas, which is one of the largest in the nation. In recent years, prominent voices in the anti-vaxxer movement have settled in and around Austin, and a vocal Facebook group formed a political action committee, Texans for Vaccine Choice. This school year, nearly 73,000, or 1.35 percent, of Texas students opted out of getting at least one required vaccine for nonmedical reasons, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That number does not include home schooled children.
The anti-vaccine community, at large, believes that vaccines are a tool of government control that make big pharmaceutical companies rich and have side effects that can cause lasting damage. Sarah, a Benbrook mom who asked that her last name be omitted over fears her family will be targeted by people who support vaccines, said she’s more scared that she’ll be forced to vaccinate her two-year-old daughter than she is of the virus itself.
“For a vast majority of the population, this is a few days of a high fever and a week of a lingering cough,” she said. “Once you give up rights to your body, the government owns you.”
In Texas, students are required to get a number of immunizations to attend school. But in 2003, the Legislature passed a law allowing kids to claim an exemption for “reasons of conscience, including religious belief,” provided parents sign an affidavit.
Allison Winnike, president and CEO of The Immunization Partnership, a Texas-based nonprofit aimed at eliminating vaccine-preventable diseases, said the state has the authority to make a prospective coronavirus vaccine mandatory, meaning people that don’t get it will be penalized, but notably not physically forced to get it.
There are three levels of vaccine interventions, Winnike said. The first is voluntary, which includes vaccines like the flu and HPV that are recommended but not required. The second is mandatory, for which penalties like fines or barring children from school can be applied. These include the measles, polio, and hepatitis A and B vaccines that kids have to get to attend school.
The last is compulsory, which is the category anti-vaxxers fear most. Such vaccinations occur when an infected person defies voluntary and mandatory interventions and continues to spread disease around the community. A judge can decide if the person should be taken into custody and forcibly vaccinated. Winnike said this occurs most often with tuberculosis patients, and that there’s no precedent for compulsory vaccinations on a widespread level.
Winnike believes that when a COVID-19 vaccine is eventually approved, it will likely fall into the voluntary category.
“Frankly, with COVID-19, the issue is more going to be trying to prioritize who gets to get the vaccine once it’s available because there won’t be enough initially to cover everyone,” she said.
Unfortunately, vaccines only work if enough people get them to create what’s called herd immunity, which slows rapidly spreading diseases and protects the small number of people who are prevented from getting vaccines for medical reasons. When people opt out of vaccination, the community’s collective immunity is weakened.
“This last year when we saw so many measles outbreaks, they were in places where their measles vaccine rates have been declining, and that’s no coincidence,” said Winnike, referring to 22 cases in Texas last year. “It’s hurting all the rest of Texans because now we’re losing our herd immunity status.”
But for anti-vaxxers, it’s a question of individual liberty.
“It’s our human right to be able to decide what is put into our bodies,” said Jessica Davis, a mom of five in East Texas. “I will not sacrifice my family or my body so others can feel ‘safe’ from a virus that is affecting so few people.”
Winnike said the fear that men in masks will start knocking on doors and forcing people to get vaccinated is “an invention” of the anti-vaxxer movement. “It’s part of their fear mongering,” she said. “That’s not how we do public health in the United States.”
Texans for Vaccine Choice, the PAC, posted on Facebook Saturday that they’re not against medical advancements, “as long as they are never, ever at the expense of informed consent, medical privacy, and vaccine choice.”
Reached for comment, the PAC wrote, “It is also our position that the fast-track designation of the vaccine which began human trials today is cause for concern, as essential steps in the safety assessment process will not be undertaken before administering the vaccine to healthy individuals.”
Though several vaccines will be entering the clinical trial phase in the next few months, it will still be at least a year before one is approved for widespread use, according to Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and codirector of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.
Hotez said this is because vaccines have to be rigorously tested to ensure that they’re safe and effective.
“Despite what the anti-vaxxers claim, that vaccines are not adequately tested for safety, in fact, there’s no pharmaceutical that’s tested more for safety than vaccines,” Hotez said.
Still, many remain unconvinced.
Jacqueline Belowsky, 23, said she’s not concerned about the coronavirus and would treat it like she does any other illness, “naturally and not in a panic.”
Her four children, who are mostly unvaccinated, got the flu in December and she said she helped them get over it in three days.
“I will never accept any vaccine no matter how scary the government makes the situation seem,” Belowsky said. “I would refuse no matter what.”
Then there’s the fact that we have to trust in the morals and the competence of whoever poured the ingredients in the tube.
After your post, I read that an estimated 10,000,000 Americans are immunocompromised. That’s an astonishing high number.
A few years ago, it would have astonished me too. It’s scary how many things — including certain medical treatments — can weaken the immune system.
I’ve got an autistic son. Round of vaccines and two weeks later, different little boy. We took a flu vaccine a few years later and I was sick as can be for two weeks when I would normally work through the flu in less than a week. My left sinuses have never been the same since. He and I will pass on any vaccine and I don’t think gov would get away with any sort of mandatory vaccine for all people. The only reason children require them is to get into school and I’m fine with the standard MMA shot. They’ve overdone the whole vaccine requirements for kids these days.
That is not correct. They also victimize those who are unable to take vaccines.
Mais absolument. Patrick Henry was right.
We need a vaccine against those obsessive mandaters.
Would you take insulin before you even know if you’re diabetic? Why wouldn’t you first get tested to see if you already have natural immunity, which is far superior to vaccine acquired immunity?
How so?
That’s a very good point. The testing should be available to anyone who thinks they need a treatment long before the vaccine is available.
It will be a cold day in Hell before I’m vaccinated for this bug.
The fact that Bill Gates is involved should give anyone pause.
Also, the esteemed epidemiologist, Madonna, pledged money for the vaccine.
No, thank you.
I don’t need it anyway. I’m outside a lot, so I get lots of Vitamin D. My immune system is very strong and I don’t have to worry about getting sick.
One would have to be a hypochondriac to get a vaccine for a virus like this.
Same here - the vaccine killed a number of people and did a number on a whole lot of people...I was stationed at Myrtle Beach AFB and only had a sore arm but my roommate hurt so bad he cried and he shook so bad and was so out of it I had to get help to take care of him for a night - the hospital just said that some reaction “was normal” and said to monitor him....I guess if he died, it was no longer their problem and mortuary services could mosey on over....
Nothing quite as satisfying as screwing yourself.
Yeah, whatever. If you'd like to be a test subject for big pharma with a vaccine against a mutating virus, feel free. I'll no gainsay your decisions on such things.
The problem is that there is a huge contingent of totalitarian folks both here and out in the real world that want to enforce their will upon everyone. Not even the covid alarmists and bedwetters hiding under their beds with their pacifiers are disputing the fact that the vast majority of folk who get it, will experience little more than a bad cold. All of this crap is being done because of a small percentage who might have a less favorable outcome.
For myself, I'll trust in the robustness of my own immune system. Back when the West Nile virus was the bugaboo of the day I picked that one up while on vacation with my wife. It was, without a doubt, the worse infection I've ever had. Was feeling fine before noon, and by 2pm, I was in bed barely able to move. It was nasty, and from what I understand, some folks spent months in the hospital because of it. For me, I missed a whole day of work, which is in itself pretty unusual.
So yeah, I'll trust in my immune system. If my late wife were still with us, I'd be doing everything I could to protect her, because cancer and chemo had pretty much destroyed her immune system. However, the Lord decided he'd prefer to have her with Him instead, so that's a worry I no longer have.
The various totalitarians here and elsewhere can bloody well piss off.
zeugma wrote: “The problem is that there is a huge contingent of totalitarian folks both here and out in the real world that want to enforce their will upon everyone.”
“Enforcing your will on everyone” is exactly what you’re doing. I couldn’t care less if you catch the flu because you choose not to get vaccinated. I do care if you infect others because you were too self-centered and stupid to get vaccinated.
And that’s it exactly.
It might not be everybody’s choice and it might not make any sense to most people, but no matter what their personal decision is, they shouldn’t be FORCED into something else.
Same with worship/public gatherings. If someone wants to quarantine, they can. But forcing someone else to do something to make it easier/”safer” for yourself is what makes the gun-grabbers think they’re right.
I'm not buying your statist crap. go bother someone who give a damn about what you think.
zeugma wrote: “Yeah, typical authoritarian thinking “
Typical self-centered thinking.
You collectivists really are a joke. A sad, bad joke.
zeugma wrote: “You collectivists really are a joke.”
Don’t you think it’s better to be a joke than a menace to public health?
Better than being a menace to the Constitutional Republic. Perhaps you’d feel more at home over on DU. I hear they have some Constitution toilet paper you might enjoy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.