Quick passage of vax bill ‘took my breath away’
Dear Gov. Ned Lamont,
The speed with which you signed HB: 6423 “An Act Concerning Immunizations” took my breath away. The pained desperation of thousands of parents who testified in person, via Zoom, in emails, and attended rallies did not warrant one moment’s pause for you. From your high perch, you could afford no empathy for regular people with complex problems.
Don’t you think we wish we could just vaccinate our children? If our lives could be that easy ...
Haven’t you ever had a doctor who was wrong and gave an incorrect diagnosis?
Do you not think it’s possible for a parent to know their child’s well-being better than a doctor?
Is there no room in our society for people who do not march to your drum beat for vaccines?
How dare you violate the rights of parents to claim a faith-based exemption for their children not to be vaccinated 100 percent to the Center for Disease Control’s recommended schedule, which today is up to 75 doses from birth to 18 years of age.
How dare you say these children cannot attend any school in Connecticut? No public or private school, no parochial school, no day care, and no college in this state.
How do you square that with the Connecticut Constitution that says, “There shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state”?
There are 8,000 out of 500,000 school-aged children in our state whose families exercise the religious exemption. We comply with the laws and sign an affidavit which is filed at the schools. But there are 21,000 children who are non-compliant unvaccinated — did you try to figure out what was going on with these families? Why were they not following the laws? No, you did not. You punished first the rights of parents who were following the laws and properly filing an exemption.
Connecticut has had the religious exemption since 1959 when the first vaccine for polio was introduced. There was always a recognition and an understanding that some of us will not or cannot be vaccinated. Today Connecticut has the fifth highest immunization rates in the country, according to the CDC. Connecticut has a 96.2 percent MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccination rate.
Follow the science? The science says community-immunity happens at different rates for each virus and often at 70 percent or 80 percent vaccination rates, meaning we do not need total compliance to safely live together with communityimmunity.
The bill you signed “grandfathered” in my own children who attend Western Middle School and Hamilton Avenue School, but what about families who have babies right now? What about future children in our state?
You are making a serious mistake in our state by not trusting parents and not respecting parents’ rights to make decisions for their children’s health, and denying them access to educational institutions, period — public or private, from kindergarten to college. An education is the most important building block to one’s life success. How dare you.
We parents will not forget this come election time. And I express deeply heartfelt thank you to Greenwich Representatives Kimberly Fiorello and Harry Arora for clearly understanding the issues, not falling for the fear-mongering, and supporting our side. Every Republican, and the too few Democrat politicians, who supported parents, God bless you.