(Un)Vaccination Nation

Ohio Republicans are about to get rid of vaccine requirements and make them illegal. Not making COVID vaccine requirements illegal,making all vaccine requirements illegal.

Through PSAs, press appearances with doctors, and even launching an unheard of $1 million lottery for immunized residents, GOP Gov. Mike DeWine wants to persuade Ohioans to choose to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

He said the facts on vaccines, which are credited with saving millions of lives and eradicating smallpox from the face of the earth, will win out.

Republicans in the state General Assembly, meanwhile, are pushing sweeping legislation to weaken Ohio’s vaccination laws — for all vaccines, not just COVID-19. On Tuesday, anti-vaccination activists crammed into the House Health Committee hearing room to testify in support of House Bill 248.

The legislation would ban vaccine requirements on customers, employees or students from businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, K-12 schools, colleges, daycares, or others. It would also prevent governments, insurers, or businesses from offering incentives for people to get vaccinated, or even requesting that people get vaccinated.

In interviews, public health experts warned the legislation would hold the door open for infectious diseases to spread among Ohioans.

Under the bill, a small business owned by asthmatics or cancer survivors — both of whom are at higher risk of serious COVID-19 complications — would have no legal right to require or even request that employees or customers who come inside be vaccinated. That’s according to Dorit Reiss, a professor with a focus on vaccine policy from the UC Hastings College of Law.

“It’s against business rights, it’s against the individual rights of private businesses, it’s against safety, and it’s in support of the virus,” she said.

 

Ohio already allows parents to exempt kids from vaccinations out of choice (and the state's vaccination level among children has dropped to 88%), but this would essentially reverse decades of medical science and thousands would end up suffering from preventable diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella.

But Republicans are bound and determined to kill as many Ohioans as possible. Everyone has to suffer and die for their utter stupidity. DeWine, for his part, is trying to stop this bill, but he can easily be overridden.

We'll see if Ohio becomes a third world country.