By JACK ARMSTRONG | Truckee
A previous opinion piece in this space titled Oppose SB 277 Now made a passionate plea to oppose closing a loophole in the current law, allowing parents to send their children into our classrooms without medically recommended vaccinations based purely on their personal beliefs. That piece contained a wealth of misleading and inaccurate statements, both about SB 277 and the science of vaccination, and then wrapped their arguments in the American flag, demanding unfettered freedom to make decisions affecting the health and safety of their children and others, including children that they might encounter.
The reality is that freedom of choice is constitutionally restricted every day on issues of public and child safety, as it should be. SB 277 does not force parents to have their children vaccinated, but does prevent them from sending them to school unvaccinated, endangering other children as well as the community around them. Unprotected, their children are susceptible to preventable diseases everywhere, a Disneyland visit not required. Should they contract measles, they become highly contagious for three days before any symptoms appear and tragically endanger those for whom vaccination immunity is not available: infants, cancer patients, HIV patients, organ transplant recipients, and anyone with compromised immunity.
The science of immunization by vaccination is the medical miracle of our time. Remember polio? Iron lungs? Children unable to walk without steel braces strapped to their legs? My wife was the only live birth of the six pregnant women in Valdez, Alaska after a wave of rubella swept through their community in the early 1940s. A friend and retired Stanford physician traveled to Africa in 1970 to help eradicate the last traces of smallpox from the planet, using vaccination. The last known case was in Somalia in 1977. Modern immunization has become a victim of its own success, in danger of being ignored and deemed unnecessary.
Opposition to SB 277 is less about freedom of choice and all about opposing vaccination, claiming it is unnecessary, doesn’t work, and causes more harm than it prevents. All demonstrably false, but passionately believed by some. Too often these beliefs were originated by Andrew Wakefield, a disbarred British physician paid $674,000 by a product liability attorney to falsify data and claim vaccination could cause autism, or by listening to a former Playboy bunny on Oprah and reading tabloids in the supermarket checkout lane. We all have the freedom to choose our own beliefs, but we do not have the freedom to choose our own facts, nor the freedom to intentionally or unintentionally harm others.
There is no proof that vaccination causes autism, but there is overwhelming proof that vaccines have saved millions of lives, prevented life-altering injuries, and spared victims the pain of subsequent treatment. Vaccines are evidence-based, while the opposition is based on a belief system.
There will always be some who, for medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated and their safety depends on having the highest possible percentage of their community immunized, sometimes called “herd immunity,” to prevent unchecked spread of infection. Vaccination of 97 percent of the community is required to achieve that effect. If more than 3 percent of the community is unvaccinated, the entire community is at risk. In our schools, that includes all of our children who come in regular contact with each other. In our community, that encompasses all of us in any gathering, public or private.
While it is a parent’s right to not have their children vaccinated, it is not their right to place the innocent at risk and force others to subsidize their care when they get sick simply because they choose to ignore sound medical public health measures. Please support SB 277.
~ Jack Armstrong is a retired computer scientist living in Truckee and a boardmember of the KidZone. He and his wife have four children, eight grandchildren, and one great-grandchild who they wish to remain safe and healthy.
