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Republicans Oppose Legislative Legislative Efforts to Strengthen Childhood Immunization Acts Across the Country, Despite Increasing Numbers of outbreaks of measles in the United States.
Bills to Limit Immunization Exemptions Adopted by Legislative Committees in Washington, DC and Maine This Month Without a Republican Supporter politico reports. Washington is currently struggling with one of the largest measles outbreaks in the country. Democratic legislators seek to limit immunization exemptions for religious and philosophical reasons.
Republicans in New York, New Jersey and Arizona also oppose Democratic Party sponsored bills that would make it more difficult for parents to obtain exemptions to vaccinate their children. Republicans in Mississippi and West Virginia have instead introduced bills that would expand vaccine exemptions in these states, Politico reported.
Congressional Republicans like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky also have go out against mandatory vaccines. Although some left-wing activists oppose vaccines, such as activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaxxer movement has been sharply criticized by Democrats while it was praised by the president Trump. Trump wanted Kennedy to lead a White House commission on vaccine safety before permanently removing the plan, Kennedy said The daily beast.
Although Trump has not been as forthright as in the past on vaccines, he has repeatedly suggested falsely that vaccines cause autism. "Massive inoculations combined with young children are the cause of the sharp rise in autism," he said. written in 2012. "Autism WAY UP – I believe in vaccines, but not all at once, to vaccines. Too difficult to handle for a small child. Govt. should stop now! written in 2014.
Officials fear being "three trump tweets", the problem becoming even more polarized, according to MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky.
"There is a gap of credulity between the parties in science that did not exist 25 years ago," Berinsky told Politico. At least three candidates for the post of Republican governor publicly skepticism expressed campaign vaccination in 2018.
In the past, the government has responded quickly to measles outbreaks such as we are currently seeing. In 1972, officials banned unvaccinated children from schooling during a measles outbreak. This initiative has been viewed as a success and has led to efforts across the country to enforce stricter vaccine laws. The federal government also reacted quickly after the death of 89 people, mostly children, during a measles outbreak in 1990. The government spent millions of dollars to provide vaccines to poor communities and the disease stopped to move to the United States in 10 years. Since 2000, each case has been associated with overseas travelers having infected unvaccinated Americans, who then transmitted the virus to other people.
Some experts fear that a government response in the current political climate may do more harm than good.
"What concerns me is that tightening requirements through the political process may politicize a problem that we can not politicize if we want to maintain public health," said the political scientist. University of Michigan, Brendan Nyhan.
Many Republicans said they supported vaccinations but opposed government mandates to demand them. Other Republicans have rejected the idea that anti-vaxxers should be able to put others at risk as a matter of personal freedom.
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is a physician, criticized Paul's claims that requiring children to be vaccinated to go to school would violate personal freedom for the "false sense of security" at a conference. press. audience last month. (In fairness, Paul is an ophthalmologist himself.)
"I've seen people who have not been vaccinated … who have contracted terrible diseases for nothing else that they did not understand that vaccination was important," said Cassidy, adding, "The requirement is simply that you can not get vaccinated. Now, if you are such a believer in freedom that you do not want to be vaccinated, then there should be a consequence, namely that you can not infect other people. "
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