Health
GOP Legislators Undermine Public Health As Measles Spreads Across 15 States

Toddler with measles rash

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West Virginia’s Republicans passed a bill through the House of Delegates on Monday that would allow religious exemptions for vaccines required for school attendance. The bill comes as dozens of measles cases across 15 states have been reported. The bill will now head to the state Senate for debate. If the bill passes, it would be the first nonmedical vaccine exemption allowed in West Virginia.

The bill began as a proposal to eliminate vaccine requirements for public virtual schooling, but it has expanded to allow private schools the right to decide whether to require vaccinations for their students. Whether the bill would allow parents to exempt their child from a public school’s vaccine mandate remains unclear at this time, according to analysis from ABC News.

The state GOP’s attempt to dismantle public health protections isn’t going over well with some West Virginians, though. Dr. Steven Eshenaur, the health officer for the Kanawha-Charleston health department, told the Associated Press, “It escapes sound reasoning why anyone would want to weaken childhood immunization laws. Our children are more important than any agenda that would bring these horrific diseases back to the Mountain State.”

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled Florida is in the midst of a measles outbreak at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Broward County. Seven of 10 statewide cases of measles have ties to the school, while the state’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo recently issued a letter that didn’t urge parents to make sure their children were immunized. Ladapo, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is best known for his vaccine denialism during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida has called for Ladapo to either resign or be fired. She said his handling of the Broward County outbreak has been “grossly irresponsible,” and calling Ladapo “a misinformation super spreader.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data in November showing that national vaccination rates among kindergartners have yet to return to their pre-pandemic levels, making West Virginia’s flirtation with religious-exemption policies that much more troubling. Currently, children in West Virginia are required to have at least one dose of chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus, and whooping cough before entering K-12 school for the first time.

By leaning into the right’s anti-science movement, GOP-controlled states are encouraging a new normal that includes outbreaks of childhood diseases once thought to be eliminated more than two decades ago.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham

On the February 26 edition of The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham weaponized a recent measles outbreak in Florida to baselessly malign migrants.

At least eight children in Broward County have contracted the virus, at least six of them at one elementary school, and an additional adult case was confirmed in Polk County. Experts say low vaccination rates are to blame. According to the most recent publicly available data, only 91.7 percent of Florida kindergarteners received the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, short of the 95 percent vaccination goal.

While the Broward County health department is still investigating the origin of the outbreak, Ingraham contended that unvaccinated migrants were responsible for the increase in outbreaks in Florida and around the country.

“Florida has seen the latest outbreak, with nine cases so far, so it's not just the spread of violent crime across the country caused by the open border, it’s the potential spread of contagious diseases,” she claimed.

Ingraham then brought on Fox News medical contributor Marc Siegel to fearmonger that the outbreak, supposedly caused by migrants, “cannot be contained."

Ingraham and Siegel failed to note, however, that in response to the outbreak, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo defied standard medical guidance, allowing parents to choose whether to send their unvaccinated and exposed children to school, rather than recommending the standard 21-day quarantine.

Suggesting migrants are culpable for disease outbreaks is a racist dog whistle, but it’s unsurprising for a network intent on demonizing immigration as a political cudgel against the Biden administration.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.