Credit where credit is due

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Vaccines are not a Democrat-Republican issue, or a left-right issue. Vaccines are a matter of public health. The only division is between the rational and the irrational.

Today Phil Scott came down on the side of the rational. According to VPR,  Lt. Gov. Phil Scott says he thinks lawmakers should do away with the philosophical exemption to the state's mandatory immunization law.

I'm hearing that the anti-vaxxers are all over him for this stance, although I'm waiting for the evidence. Meanwhile, I think it's great to have a leading statewide official standing for public health and safety. 

14 thoughts on “Credit where credit is due”

  1. and some politics of vaccination.

    Well good for Phil Scott.

    And there are plenty of strange quirks to this issue when Governor Shumlin is sounding more like vaccine choice supporters Rand Paul and Chris Christie.

    Charlie Pierce explored it a little and thinks it is possible wedge issue (not sure but here it is).

    So this is what I’m thinking. The Republicans will use this as a wedge to split the Democratic party along the Nervous Parent fault-line that is rivening it. This fault line may well crack open between classes, as the wealthier left seems more inclined toward using Internet quackery to protect their little snowflake babies. And it might well crack open along age lines, as younger voters — the ones who grew up in a country without measles, and without polio, and without whooping cough, and without freaking smallpox, because of vaccination protocols — seem less inclined toward herd immunity than the older members of the herd. http://www.esquire.com/news-po…

    And interestingly,Mississippi has the highest national rate of childhood vaccination.

  2. On Tuesday at the State House I overheard Sen. Zuckerman defending nuance on this issue in a way that is very similar to the stance that Governor Shumlin and others have taken flak for most recently.

    After Sen. Zuckerman shared his view, another listener asked rhetorically, “What do Rand Paul, Chris Christie and David Zuckerman have in common?”

    While I appreciated that the issue isn’t currently being ideologically driven by political party affiliation, is this issue completely binary, or “black or white”? Are all those who defend or support the status quo “hopeless cases”?

  3. across the board are choosing not to vaccinate. It includes the affluent as well as the liberty movement and libertarians of all stripes. Pls don’t attempt to convince me all of these folks have parked their brains somewhere and do not care about their kids or other kids and are scientific neanderthalls.

    That is real anti-science belief that correlates with a political party. The most anti-vaccine hotbeds of the most anti-vaccine state, California, are all 80 percent Democratic so that also correlates to political party if evolution and global warming belief does.

    http://www.science20.com/scien…

    Under the opiate-spell of religion the herd is more docile as Churchianity teaches obedience to authority is above all:

    Mississippi – one of the states with the worst rates of smoking, obesity and physical inactivity – is seldom viewed as a leader on health issues. But it is one of two states that permit neither religious nor philosophical exemptions to its vaccination program. West Virginia is the other. Only children with medical conditions that would be exacerbated by vaccines may enroll in Mississippi schools without completing the immunization schedule, which calls for five vaccines.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02…

    Why 1 in 5 millennials thinks vaccines cause autism

    Erin Brodwin

    Feb. 3, 2015, 2:21 PM 3,513 21

    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com…

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02…

  4. Phil wrote back to me:

    Thank you for your supportive message regarding my comments on immunization. I admit I have a streak of “Yankee Independence” in me that values and respects our personal rights, but when we, as individuals, engage in an action that adversely affects the public health and safety of others, I believe it crosses the line of personal freedom.

    Afuckingmen.

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