Last week I talked about vaccinations and how many people choose to vaccinate their children and many people don’t as well as how there have been many outbreaks (most notably measles) of viruses recently due to the non-vaccination and the ease of these viruses spreading from one person to another. “The United States is experiencing the greatest number of measles cases in a single year in 27 years. Fueling the outbreaks are anti-vaccine groups that have spread misinformation that lowered vaccination rates in vulnerable communities.”
This week, I am going to go a little deeper and dive into an article by Marisa Iati that was released earlier today: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D. California) signing a pro- vaccine bill into law this week. It is an article I found on the Washington Post website and it goes into detail about the protest that went on after the bill was signed, by anti-vaccine activists.
“California’s bill, SB 276, creates a standardized medical exemption request form to be approved by the state’s public health officer. It also authorizes the health department to review requests for medical exemptions at schools where less than 95 percent of students are vaccinated, at schools that do not report their vaccination rates and from doctors who have written five or more waivers in a given year.”
It started off with protesters holding a candlelight vigil with pictures of children who have been hurt or have passed from the vaccinations. The reporter even included an article link of the teen Ethan Lindenburger (which I have also attached) who was vaccinated against his parents’ wishes and testified before congress- which to the reporters knowledge, did know why that was there. Soon after, the “craziness” of the protest began to ensue. Women started to throw what seemed to be used feminine products at senators in honor of the babies who have passed “so their voices can be heard”.
Overall, I would give this article an A. I think Marissa did a good job, she linked many sources, the actual bill that was signed off (which I have also linked above just incase you are curious to read or look over it), a link to another article by The Washington Post that was posted earlier this year about Ethan Lindenburger going to congress about vaccinations, and there is also a link for a video about called “200 Years of Vaccine Skepticism: by The Vaccine Project linked in the article as you scroll through just in case you want to know more.
*I, personally, am pro-vaccination (sorry if I offended anyone, I don’t mean to). I chose this article and this topic because it is a big topic right now and I wanted to learn more about the other side of the argument. I am curious about the other side as well as learning both sides of the argument was one of our topics a couple of weeks ago in our lecture. I think it is healthy and important that we learn both side of the argument before we make our decision.
