Gov. Jared Polis’ good fight against mandatory vaccines.
Gov. Jared Polis should be commended for his clarity and leadership in standing up for freedom in Colorado. House Bill 1312 would have created a private tracking system based upon lifestyle choices, placed personal medical decisions in the hands of state bureaucrats, and eroded consumer rights. Polis was right to oppose it.
Colorado has a long history of setting national precedents. We were the first to give women the right to vote and the first to legalize marijuana. Polis’ refusal to support HB 1312 sets an example for the rest of the country for what democracy in action looks like. While other states acquiesce to the pharmaceutical industry’s demands for legislation to increase sales of their liability-free products, it is reassuring to see our governor understand the value of freedom and the democratic imperative of bodily autonomy.
Early in the 2019 legislative session, Polis expressed concerns
about the wisdom of trying to coerce vaccine uptake by the revoking of vaccine exemption rights. The governor continued to express reservations about new drafts of HB 1312 which still demanded, among other things, that families exercising their vaccine exemption rights would have to travel to their local health departments to do so. This, Polis pointed out, would have been discriminatory to poor and rural families.
It should concern every Coloradan that HB 1312 was promoted by lobbyists whose stated goals include making 72 doses of vaccines, including adding HPV and yearly flu shots, compulsory for all children. Every child, every shot. No exceptions.
During his executive order news conference June 13, Polis repeatedly expressed the need to protect our rights to choose. There is tremendous value in the governor’s “carrot approach” over the “stick approach” proposed by supporters of vaccine mandates. While the governor encouraged citizens to vaccinate or to use official exemption forms, he did not change Colorado statute. Our rights to medical, philosophical and religious vaccine exemptions have been upheld, and there are still no statutory requirements for citizens to submit to a state tracking registry or to use an official form of any kind.
Polis also understands that excessive government control only breeds distrust. When laws force consumers to use a particular medical product, citizens begin to wonder why. Why, in a free market economy, would the government need to intervene on behalf of an industry that is already extremely profitable? If the product is safe and it works, people will want to buy it. If there is any concern about citizens’ growing “vaccine hesitancy,” we might consider addressing the reasons for resistance rather than the application of more political force. Perhaps an in-depth study comparing the health and well being of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations could answer some questions. Surprisingly, this study has never been done.
What the governor’s executive order misses, however, is that when the wrong questions are being asked, the right answers will never be found. Everyone is rightfully concerned about public health. That is a given.
State Rep. Kyle Mullica and other supporters of vaccine mandates liken the so-called “public health crisis” to standing in a pool of gasoline and waiting for a spark. Colorado had a case of measles this year that, according to their logic, should have been the spark. There was no instantaneous conflagration. No massive pandemic. There was one case of measles that lasted for five to seven days. So let us place an appropriate emphasis on how much fear was orchestrated by that one fleeting case of measles.
We must face the reality that many of the epidemics of our time are not pathogenic. They are toxicological. And because of that undeniable fact, our public health priorities are grossly misplaced.
Today in the United States of America, one in 17 children have life-threatening food allergies, one in five have allergic eczema, one in five are overweight or obese, one in six have developmental disabilities, one in nine are diagnosed with ADHD, one in eight have asthma, one in 20 children suffer from depression and one in 36 children now have autism. These are the real public health threats we face today.
Rather than spending millions of dollars to increase vaccination rates by maybe 1 percent, those resources should be used to help those in need now. Rather than promoting coercive legislation to harass the 2.5 percent to 3.3 percent of parents who are in compliance and exempted their children from one or more vaccines, Polis and our state legislators should work together with stakeholder organizations such as Colorado Health Choice Alliance to focus on more pressing public health needs such as chronic, environmentally triggered diseases.