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Religious anti-vaxxers sue to keep their kids from having to get flu shots
By adamg on Thu, 11/12/2020 - 2:25pm
Several parents today sued Gov. Baker over his order requiring all students under 30 to get flu shots or risk getting kicked out of school, saying it infringes on their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and their rights to raise their children as they see fit.
Besides, the parents add in their suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, the flu shot does nothing to prevent Covid-19 and might actually increase the risk of contracting Covid-19, by weakening their children's immune systems. Also, flu shots often don't work, kids rarely need to be hospitalized for the flu, so shots won't free up beds needed for Covid-19 patients and, by the way, Covid-9 isn't all that serious for kids, anyway. They also point to the fact that the order exempts the home-schooled, but requires it even for student who would normally be in school but who are also now learning at home.
In their complaint, the parents do not specify their religions or what specific religious beliefs of theirs that the state's August flu-shot mandate violates.
In addition to their religious issues, the parents also cite what they say is a Massachusetts constitutional right to education - that started with the way Boston Latin School was started in 1635 and the legislature then required schooling for all children in 1642. By issuing the order by "administrative fiat" without legislative consideration and by essentially forcing parents to choose between a shot and public education, Baker is depriving them of their Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, they allege, adding the fact the order only applies to students under 30 is unequal protection under the law because it doesn't apply to people over 30.
And then there's the Constitutional protection of privacy, allegedly violated by intruding in the relationship between parents and their children, they say.
Parents, and not the Governor or the Department of Public Health, are in the best position to determine whether or not their minor children should receive a medically unnecessary vaccination in order to attend school. ... Parents have the responsibility and authority to make medical decisions on behalf of their children. This includes the right to refuse or discontinue treatments, even those that may be life-sustaining.
The lawsuit acknowledges the state will probably try to pull out some decision like 1905's Jacobson v. Massachusetts, in which the Supreme Court upheld a fine levied against a Cambridge minister who refused a smallpox vaccination for himself and his son in the midst of a smallpox epidemic, as a legal underpinning for Baker's order.
True, in its ruling, the court said that:
[I[n every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.
But, the complaint continues, the flu and Covid-19 are no smallpox:
Jacobson involved compulsory vaccination in the midst of a smallpox epidemic when there was no other less coercive means available to staunch the outbreak. In this situation, the court believed at that time that a vaccination was a medical necessity to combat the disease. Compare this to vaccinations for sexually transmitted diseases like HPV- a compulsory vaccination is not a medical necessity because individuals can protect themselves through some combination of sexual knowledge, disease screening, safe sex, and abstinence. Likewise, a compulsory flu vaccine is also not a medical necessity, nor has the flu vaccine, which has been around for decades, ever been considered medically necessary.
The ten parents, from Medford to Spencer, are represented by a lawyer from Lynn, Thomas O. Mason, and two lawyers from Florida, one of whom has been active in fighting his county's Covid-19 mask ordinance, the other of whom specializes in First Amendment issues, although more typically those involving strip clubs.
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Comments
tangential
but the anti-vaxxer and pro-life crowds depicted on a venn diagram is a perfect circle
Not exactly
Written by someone who got a flu shot 2 months ago, makes sure his kid's shots are up to date, is waiting eagerly for a Covid-19 vaccine, and believes in the sanctity of human life.
Speaking of circular things, you really need to get out of your bubble and meet some real people. In fact, you might to note that most of the hotbeds of the anti-vaxxer movement are in "progressive" parts of the country, like Oregon. Never understood the correlation between the two, but a tighter one than between "pro-life" and "anti-vax."
Oregon's not progressive
outside of Portland. It was founded as a whites-only territory and has a lot of survivalists and others of that ilk, accompanied by plenty of racism and antisemitism.
Massive oversimplification
A lot of the more backward types are California refugees, for starters.
And red lining was a national thing that played out at the local level.
There are also things that go along with "whites only" - such as it being a great place to pass if you wanted to move your multiracial clan out of Tennessee in the 1870s and didn't mind straightening your hair, staying out of the sun, etc.
My grandparents lived alongside and worked with plenty of migrants black folk from the south in the Keizer shipyards and the surrounding Vanport area during WW II.
Eugene
I lived in Eugene for a few years. It is decidedly to the left of Portland. Actually, the whole Willamette Valley is the leftist enclave (outside of Junction City) and that is where 3/4 of the population in the state lives.
i was aware
that it wasn’t totally apt when i wrote it, but i thought the sentiment regarding the willingness to put other people’s children at risk under the guise of first amendment freedoms versus the strong belief that others should not have the freedom to make a choice about their own potential children would have been clear.
i suppose a more accurate way of putting it would be that anti-vaxxers are almost always pro-life, even if the converse isn’t always true.
regarding meeting other people, i’m a musician who has been on several tours. it’s right in my user name. i’m also a first-generation american, so make of that what you will.
Still not buying your venn diagram
One can definitely find those who oppose vaccines on the "progressive" side of things. In fact, I'd certainly claim that the two are far from linked. I mean, the next thing you'll be trying to claim is that people who are pro-life support the death penalty, then perhaps you'll mention euthanasia. Or, you could study the pro-life movement and realize that you're a bit off in your suppositions.
Agreed
It doesn't track with ideology as much as one might think.
It tends to track with binary thinking and contrarian belief systems generally. These are not confined to one side of the spectrum, but are found at the left and right fringes of the spectrum.
However, the playing field is shifting: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-pseudoscience/anti-vaccine-mo...
RFK Jr.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. is the most prominent anti-vaxxer going. I assume you all believe he's a religious right wing nutjob?
i would argue
at least in part, that the rarity of leftist anti-vax thought is exactly what makes it newsworthy.
also people are criticizing the pro-life / anti-vax link by citing instead a conservative christian / pro-life link, which i would argue is itself hardly exclusive.
anyway, as i said before i agree that my venn point wasn’t as apt as i thought when i wrote it.
And I would argue
That if you think that the anti-vax insanity is that rare on the left, perhaps I've got you wrong. Maybe you are squarely in the center, which is honorable.
Look, my point is that they are not linked, and I appreciate that you see that.
I just wanna applaud this
I just wanna applaud this comment thread. I rarely find an article like this that doesn't spiral into disrespect on both sides.
So congrats on a really thoughtful discussion about these important issues. It's nice to see civility and intelligent thought by both left and right online. It made my day reading all this!
Yeah, the Venn diagram point
Yeah, the Venn diagram point falls apart even worse when you try to explain your reasoning.
"the sanctity of human life"
Against abortion?
Don't have one.
"Don't want to be executed, don't commit a crime"
Kind of the same sentiment, don't ya think.
All I know is that we were all fetuses at one point in our lives. Then we were born, and then hopefully our parents got us our shots, so we would have horrible diseases and perhaps die.
No
Getting pregnant isn't a crime, Waquoit - but if anti-choice people have their way, it will become a death sentence for some women.
The counter point being
Being the product of a sexual union is a crime publishable by death, at least in your eyes.
And to be fair, there are rational arguments on both sides, but as you decided to take it to one extreme, the other view is kind of important to take into consideration.
legislation doesn't reduce abortion, birth control does.
According to research, Free long term birth control dramatically reduces abortion. Anyone that honestly cares about the sanctity of life needs to assist and support everyone's control of their own bodies and fund the research that makes birth control safer and healthier for men and women. No law ever saved an unborn life.
If people actually cared about saving fetuses
they'd be pushing for better sex education, cheaper contraceptives, and better health care and parental leave. It's pretty clear from the lack of that, that what they actually care about is policing women.
That's not a compelling argument
I find that argument about as compelling as "Against slavery? Don't buy or own slaves."
I support women's rights to control their own bodies; I'm solidly pro choice. I just think that particular argument doesn't go anywhere useful.
Really?
For those with a grasp of nuance, I'd say it clearly articulates that one's body should be under one's own control and not that of others. But if it's too elusive, try "Not your body? Not your choice."
Whose body?
The more thoughtful anti-abortionists would claim that the fetus also has a body, and that thus "Not your body? Not your choice." can be addressed to the pregnant woman as well. I am not one of them, but I don't think this is an entirely trivial argument. One might say that it's a necessary consequence of considering the fetus a human being, which is a possible consequence of religious belief.
Not being burdened with that, I think of a fetus as an organism that imperceptibly develops from a small cluster of cells into what we call a baby. It's very difficult to decide what level of consideration we should give it at each step along that path. The religious take the easy way out, and just say that it magically becomes fully human at the mythical "moment of conception" (there is no such moment; conception takes a while).
I am not willing to accept that the recently-introduced gametes together comprise a person whose rights should predominate over those of the person in whose body it resides. But if it will eventually develop into a human being with all the rights of any other, then in some way those rights must develop along with it. How they develop, or how our recognition of them develops, is a serious and subtle question. Deciding how to answer it is a big responsibility, which is why so many are ready to leave it to religion.
Don't forget the
"all lives matter" crowd.
I think the anti-vax and anti
I think the anti-vax and anti-abortion crowds are actually pretty distinct. Anti-abortion people are generally conservative christians. Anti-vaxxers tend to come more from the homeopathic wine-mom set.
The horseshoe effect
As the ends get further apart, they get closer together.
Anti-vaxxers tend to be far-right and far-left conspiracy nuts. I would say they're usually actually only leftist in terms of aesthetic, as in yoga/kale/atheism, because they're actually pretty dang right-wing in terms of their racism and ableism, but in any case, a big portion of anti-vaxxers are very much NOT the gun-toting folks who hate science because it goes against Jesus. They do hate science though (multilevel marketing of pseudoscientific cures, anyone?)
The first two states to get rid of the religious/personal exemptions for vaccination were West Virginia and California. This should tell us something.
I would say they're usually
What you're describing here are liberals, not leftists.
It tells us where the pharma lobby is strong
Not much else. But keep stereotyping, labeling and being the close minded person you are hypothesizing about.
Labels don't help
Im not sure why people prefer labels to science. Seems to be a lot of people that dont understand either on this board, and simply have no understanding of 1)statistics, 2)power of pharma marketing
3) health. Its sad to see. Good luck.
Influenza vaccine does not prevent person-to-person transmission
As a medical doctor I would like to point out a medical fact of which administrators and healthcare professionals need to be aware. Vaccines can produce one of two different types of immunity. These are blood immunity (IgG) and surface nose-throat immunity (IgA).
The current influenza vaccines only produce blood immunity (IgG). This will protect the individual and reduce hospitalization and days in the hospital. However, it have never been shown to reduce person-to-person transmission.
In order to reduce person-to-person transmission you must have nose-throat (IgA) antibodies. This can be produced by a vaccine made by Medimmune. However, this vaccine is now out of favor and rarely used.
It is very laudable to legislate the protection of school children from their fellow classmates. However, the current influenza vaccine technology does not accomplish this. We need IgA vaccines and then we can talk about legislation. Right now the data is not there. There is not one study I am aware of that shows the current blood immunity vaccines reduce human-to-human transmission of the virus.
The main objective of this
The main objective of this order was not to eliminate flu since as you stated a vaccine like that doesn't exist. It was to help reduce the healthcare system capacity which right now given where the trends are heading is a good thing. Secondly to reduce symptoms if someone does have the flu so the covid alarm bells do not go off.
Back to school
That's not how Venn Diagrams work. I'm guessing the Venn Diagram of anti-vaxxers, pro-lifers and people who don't understand Venn Diagrams is only filled in the intersection of all three sets.
Stop calling them pro-life -
Stop calling them pro-life - they are anything but. They are forced-birthers.
nope
There are some people with legitimate religious reasons for refusing vaccines, but this a very small group. Meanwhile, most anti-vaxxers are Whole Foods shopping, homeopathy ding-dongs, who don't even belong to any recognized religion. Conversely, as a practicing Catholic, my priest and bishop (i.e.: Cardinal Sean) are very clear that we must abide by these orders. Please don't use "pro-life" as an inaccurate pejorative.
This lawsuit seems to be political more than religious. While a judge may not want to parse through the doctrine of anyone's faith, it would seem fairly obvious how to deal with this. - Name your religion and provide documentary evidence of your faith's prohibition on vaccines. Facebook posts from Jenny McCarthy don't count.
Our government shouldn’t police religions
You’re suggesting that the government require one’s religion to have clergy and written laws in order to be valid. First amendment caselaw doesn’t hold this to be the case. A religious belief just has to be consistent and sincerely held (and in some cases demonstrated to be held by other people). This is actually a good thing usually; vegetarianism or anti-corporal-punishment views can be asserted as one’s religious beliefs.
What makes more sense is to do what three states have done and remove the option for religious objection to vaccination. One’s religious beliefs don’t permit them to harm nonconsenting others, which is what spreading diseases does. We don’t get to go around stoning people and saying it’s because of religion, and we also shouldn’t get to jeopardize people’s health.
No Vaccine For Your Kid?
Sure thing.
Just make sure when little Rebecca is sick that you call your pastor and not a doctor. That will make her alls better right away when they pray over her.
Can't have your God cake and not eat it too you know.
Perhaps I should have put it in the story ...
There is a line in the complaint that basically says that even if the flu vaccine did work, their kids would be protected by herd immunity from all the sheep, um, people, who did get their kids vaccinated.
Give Mom and Dad Two Tickets to Everett
They seem to believe in luck when the house, in this case known as biology, always wins.
They can then roll up behind the hearse to Woodlawn or Glenwood with their progeny.
That's the most annoying part
These people are not questioning medicine or even the value of a public education. They just want exceptions to the rules.
The anti-vaccine people, and the pro-life people
The anti-vaccine people and the pro-life people don't care about the welfare and well-being of their own kids, let alone other people's kids, and other people, period. The anti-vaccine movement is based on fear of Autism spectrum disorder. That so-called "link" between vaccines and autism was not only disproved and de-bunked years ago, but the British-born Dr. Andrew Wakefield who concocted that so-called "link" between vaccines and autism lost his accreditation and his license to practice medicine, and he should have.
The anti-choice, or the pro-life people, as they call themselves, don't care about other people, either.
Neither do the people, including Donald Trump, who refuses to concede to the Biden/Harris ticket election. Nor do the people who refuse to wear masks and social distance in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It's just plain disgusting, and it's the reason why Covid-19 is so rampant and so out of control right now.
Doesn't this defeat the
Doesn't this defeat the argument that this is about their right to decide what is the best medicine for their children? They're admitting that vaccinations have an impact on more than just the person being immunized.
Oh they know
And they know that these diseases are much more risky than the vaccines. They just don't want their kids to be the ones creating the herd immunity.
Your comment is ridiculous.
Your comment is ridiculous. Do you tell the smoker to contact the cigarette company when they need care for all of the conditions they are likely to get from destroying their health? Or the obese person to contact McDonalds when they develop type 2 diabetes? They take up more hospital resources than a healthy child who doesn’t get a flu shot ever will.
Uh what?
I’ll skip over your fat-shaming and oversimplification of public health outcomes, but when did we discuss people who said they were going to opt out of vaccinations because tobacco or McDonald’s told them it was immoral? Because that would be the parallel analogy. These people are literally saying their religious belief is that they can’t partake in medicine, so the above poster is saying they should refrain consistently.
Assertions of fact
Apparently not.
This suit is messy in so many ways
But since the religious freedom aspect has been keyed in on, I do think it is weird that they don't even bother to make a case as to why the flu shot requirement is an infringement of religious freedom. Not one iota.
It amazes me that some lawyers have too much time on their hands. I mean, isn't an hour of their time worth at least $300.
Lawyer time
They get paid, even when the case they argue is utterly without merit. Remember, anyone can sue for anything. Witness all the Trump election lawsuits currently being dismissed. His lawyers are getting paid, too.
Really?
I thought in lawsuits, the lawyers only get paid if they win.
And, in this case, in addition to seeking a ban on the flu-shot requirement, the plaintiffs are also seeking attorney's fees.
Lawyers get paid if they lose
Unless they take a case on contingency (typically things like personal injury). My litigious ex has supported the college funds of plenty of lawyers who lost cases for him.
In a case like this one, where a win doesn't involve a payout, no lawyer would take it without getting paid.
Courts aren’t allowed to make
Courts aren’t allowed to make decisions about what a religion does or does not really believe, so saying their religious beliefs are that vaccines are evil is the final word, so there’s not much point to the lawyer talking about it. They don’t have to prove they have some reason for religiously believing vaccines are evil. This is a longstanding consequence of the First Amendment.
This is the same reason courts are forced to punt if they have a case like a will that says “all my money to Bob if he’s a practicing Catholic”. Courts are not allowed to make that determination. (What a testator could do is say something like “all my money to Bob if Father Joe signs a notarized affidavit that Bob is a practicing Catholic”. Courts will enforce that because they don’t have to make any determination of what a practicing Catholic is. They only have to determine if Fr. Joe did or did not execute the document.)
The court can get into evidence about whether or not the people sincerely believe what they are claiming to believe, but it can’t make judgements on whether what they believe is right or wrong in the sense of “your religious belief that vaccines are evil is an incorrect religious belief”.
It can also, of course, rule on whether or not their rights were illegally violated, since no right is absolute.
So-called "religious freedom" laws
This was another one we can chock up to Bill Clinton - he let the nose of the so-called "religious freedom" elephant in the door, and it's been all downhill from there. It's all assertion, fact-free, no proof needed. Never mind that you can pray anywhere, we must have prayer in schools, my religion says so, no I don't have to show you where. Never mind that religious belief is a personal thing, we can't be truly free in our religious beliefs unless we can remove others' freedom to believe otherwise. This so-called "religious freedom" bullshit is a blight on our country that needs to be completely eradicated.
Is the religion that..
is anti-vax the same one that can't make gay wedding cakes?
Flu vs COVID?
Scientific American Article from October 27,2020.
"A Flu Shot Might Reduce Coronavirus Infections, Early Research Suggests
Hospital workers who got vaccinated were significantly less likely to develop COVID than those who did not"
"Although results have overall been mixed, other recent studies have linked flu vaccines—as well as other vaccines—with lower COVID-19 risk. In two papers, one published in the journal Vaccines in September and the other in the Journal of Medical Virology in June, researchers found that COVID-19 rates were lower in regions of Italy where higher percentages of adults aged 65 and older had received a flu vaccine. And in a preprint paper released in July, researchers at the Mayo Clinic and the biomedical computing company nference found that adults who had received vaccines for flu, polio, chicken pox, measles-mumps- rubella (MMR), Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), hepatitis A or B, or pneumococcal disease over the past five years were less likely to test positive for the novel coronavirus than people who had not received any of them."
and
"For now, though, there are still more questions than answers. “As far as telling people, ‘You should go get a flu vaccine because it can protect you from COVID,’ that's a little bit of a stretch at this point,” Foxman says. But, she adds, people should still go get the flu shot—because, at the very least, “it’s going to protect you from the flu.”"
I wonder if part of this is
I wonder if part of this is that people who are likelier to get flu shots are also the same people who are likelier to wear masks, practice social distancing, and wash their hands?
Thanks for the link
I appreciate the link. I wish it told more about the sample size of the workers. On the other side of the argument is this
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/
It talks about a 30% increase in coronaviruses (not covid-19) for people who got the flu shot due to viral interference. This was a study before covid, but the fact that coronaviruses in general saw such a distinctive leap should be cause for pause and a need for better understanding
seems like we have another option
We can just mandate vaccinations for in person schooling, not all school.
Naw
People make the argument that if you don’t want to vaccinate, you can homeschool, but I don’t want my kids coming into contact with unvaccinated people at the YMCA, grocery store, public transit, etc. Can’t we just mandate it as a condition of receiving any public benefit? And I do mean any, like tax deductions, roadways, utilities. If you don’t like living in a modern attempting-to-be-disease-free society, you can live completely off the grid.
While many of their arguments are incorrect...
...I don't think I can support a mandatory influenza vaccination (or as a condition for education). Yeah, I got a flu shot, and I think everyone should get one. I think they should be free, no insurance required, and available on every street corner. But I don't think the flu is bad enough, or close enough to herd immunity threshold, to take this kind of stand.
SARS-CoV-2? Yeah, at least for the next few years, once a vaccine is ready. Polio? Probably, since it's so devastating, even though it's not endemic in the US. Measles? I think so, given how high the herd immunity requirements are.
But I don't think influenza quite clears the bar for medical coercion. (Medical coercion in the public interest, yes... but let's be clear about what it is.)
(At a meta level, consider that a good number of these people are probably reacting to it being mandatory, more so than the idea of vaccination itself -- you may actually get better vaccination rates in this small segment of the population by making it optional but doing outreach.)
Flu cases clog the hospitals
Flu cases clog the hospitals in a normal winter. Also flu does cause a significant number of fatalities each year. This is not a normal year. A flu epidemic on top of covid would be even more of a nightmare.
Enormous body of evidence says vaccinate the kids
The role of school aged children in ginning up flu epidemics has been observed for centuries, studied and documented in the past century, and the effectiveness of vaccination of school kids for protecting the entire community was verified in the last decade in a definitive double blind study.
Massachusetts has had a strong vaccination mandate for public schools and colleges for at least two decades (my kids are in their 20s). Adding a flu shot does not change that. The reason for the squawking is that a new addition to the mandates gives the cuckoos a platform to squawk from - as if this is a new thing, when it is not.
You are entitled to your opinions, but public health policy (including this one) is based on facts. The fact is that vaccinating school kids against the flu suppresses community transmission and saves the lives of those who cannot be effectively vaccinated. Period. The last thing we need this year is a flu epidemic on top of the COVID 19 disaster.
Good point about existing mandate.
If access is already gated on the other vaccinations, my argument gets a lot harder to make -- and so does theirs. :-)
You are entitled to your
No, public health policies are based on opinions. Of course flu vaccine will reduce spread. But the question of trading liberty for security - is a value judgement.
What liberty?
Seriously, what liberty is being traded here?
The liberty to do as one
The liberty to do as one pleases... liberty is less about the justifying the "thing" you do/don't want to do, and more about the fact that government employees and officials are making the decision for you, which you are capable of making yourself.
You're perfectly free to do as you please
You're perfectly free to do as you please, but you don't have the right to do it whenever and wherever you please. Don't want to vaccinate? Stay home.
Ok, so
the same liberty violated by "no shirt, no shoes, no service"?
What about the liberty to not have your children exposed to other people who refuse to follow basic public health rules? Shouldn't your rights to be a pile of germs end where my breathing space begins?
Mumps nearly killed my mother
She went deaf in one ear, too.
She had had them as a child, but also had an autoimmune disorder. She contracted them when she went to the doctor and some unvaccinated child nuked her.
You don't have the liberty to kill people with your reckless anti-reality stupidity.
I suppose you think drunk driving is WAHHHOOO FREEDUMB too - and that people who don't want to be maimed and killed should just stay home? Riiigggghhhhttt.
He said, with no supporting data
That's just your opinion, isn't it?
Based on science, dear
Now run along and let the grownups discuss this.
Not like those evil mask mandates are keeping you from your plans to spend the day daydreaming about Ayn Rand returning to life and sleeping with you.
Based on logic, , policy !=
Based on logic, [insert ad hominem derogatory salutationword here], policy != science. Policy can be based on science that's been processed like sausage meat through various philosophies, opinions, personal preferences, partisan politics, Constitutional restrictions, constituencies, whatever. But in the end it's a mishmash. You're overselling your position when you try to justify a policy you want to impose over other people by saying it's "just facts" or "just science".
Longer
Somewhere in my house I still have my MA Vaccination Schedule Booklet. From the mid to late 70's.
Would you happen to have a link
To the double blind study? I would like to see as I am always searching for quality studies on vaccines. Some notable facts to the contrary include: After a heavily funded marketing campaign from 2003-2005 flu shot distribution went from 30m doses to 130m doses with almost zero effect on yearly transmission rates. In fact 2017-18 saw 80k deatgs and the highest flu cases since 1969 despite 140 million vaccine doses in the US.
I suppose this is largely because the flu vaccine is a guessing game of what each year's strain will be. Guess right and you are dealing with a 40% effective vaccine, guess wrong and you have squat.
The flu vaccine increase has caused a big spike in the VAERS numbers in the last decade, and in in the swine flu "pandemic" in 1967 , there were significant numbers of GB and paralysis from flu shots that lead to a class action suit. South Korea has seen. South Korea has seen 100 deaths that seem to be related to flu shots this year. There are also studies showing viral interference from flu shots may worsen the body's immune reaction to certain Coronaviruses. I find it laughable when people say things like "the science is settled" or "period" or "facts" with vaccines when numerous quality studies show so many conflicting data. Don't fear the truth, seek it. There is a decision to be weighed with many vaccines. They clearly impact different immune syatems in different ways.
The point is to avoid overwhelming hospitals
Never have the misfortune of needing to be hospitalized during a bad flu season - they are overwhelmed and operating at capacity (speaking from experience). A big reason they are pushing flu shots so hard this season to avoid having simultaneous spikes in flu and COVID-19 - that will make last spring's pushing hospitals past capacity look like nothing.
Another issue is that when
Another issue is that when screening kids for covid, it and the flu can have some overlap in symptoms. If we can reduce flu, then we can reduce unnecessary shut downs and isolations for educators, staff and students over things that aren’t actually COVID.
Many people are unaware
that ordinary influenza kills on the order of 25,000 to 35,000 people per year in the USA.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
"But I don't think the flu is bad enough..."
OMG... are you one of the people who wake up at 3am with an upset stomach, puke, then go back to sleep? Then the next morning you think you had "the flu" and go to work without a problem.
Look, when I got influenza it was the pretty much the two worst weeks of my life.
I would have welcomed death as each breath was labored and painful, I was soaking my mattress, and every major bone joint felt on fire.
I'd pay $1,000 a year for every flu shot, even if it was only 50% effective.
But go ahead, refuse it.
I may be the one needing it.
Same for the Pneumonia vaccine. Yea, had that too and it was 2x as bad. I didn't know there was a vaccine.
But I learned it exists, and now everyone reading this will know.
All the more interesting
The definitive studies showing how vaccinating school children against influenza protects members of the community who cannot be vaccinated or cannot effectively be vaccinated took place in a series of Hutterites religious communities.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5157992/
http://www.hutterites.org/
Stay tuned
for the religious freedom lawsuit I plan on filing tomorrow. It is my sincerely held belief that anyone sending their kid to a classroom without an up-to-date vaccine schedule is an abomination who should be beaten with a sock full of nickels and then exiled to New Hampshire. And apparently the laws of this great Commonwealth require that the courts treat my pants-on-head-crazy beliefs as though they're serious legal arguments worthy of anyone's time, so we should definitely all argue in open court about how my ridiculous ideas should inform state policy in the midst of a pandemic.
Hey don’t bring New Hampshire
Hey don’t bring New Hampshire into this
Well, it seems appropriate
It they are exiled to New Hampshire, they can Live Free And Die.
To save some folks some time
If you're coming here for the first time and you're all set to pound out the world's most finely crafted argument why vaccinations are the devil's work or how you don't need any because you've carefully built up your immune system over the years, so checkmate, libs, don't bother, because I'm not going to approve them for posting.
On this matter, if on none other, I stand with Cotton Mather.