New Hampshire’s GOP Is Taking a Stand—Against the Polio Vaccine

[Edge-]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...-antivax-bill/

New Hampshire could soon beat Florida—known for its anti-vaccine Surgeon General—when it comes to loosening vaccine requirements. A first-in-the-nation bill that’s already passed New Hampshire’s state House, sponsored only by Republican legislators, would end the requirement for parents enrolling kids in child care to provide documentation of polio and measles vaccination. New Hampshire would be the only state in the US to have such a law, although many states allow religious exemptions to vaccine requirements.

Currently, Republicans control New Hampshire’s state House, Senate and governor’s office—but that isn’t a guarantee that the bill will be signed into law, with GOP Gov. Chris Sununu seemingly flip-flopping when it comes to disease control. Sununu did sign a bill in 2021 allowing people to use public places and services even if they did not receive the Covid-19 vaccine. But the next year, the governor vetoed a bill that would bar schools from implementing mask mandates.

The polio vaccine, first offered in 1955, and the MMR shot, which treats the highly infectious measles, mumps, and rubella viruses, are two very crucial vaccines both in the US and internationally. Since the year 2000 alone, vaccines against measles are estimated to have saved over 55 million lives around the world.

The CDC recommends that kids get their first dose of MMR vaccine between 12 and 15 months of age, and a first dose of the polio vaccine at around two months old. All states currently require children to have at least started vaccination against measles and polio in order to enroll in child care, according to the nonprofit Immunize.org. A CDC report found that for the 2021-2022 school year, around 93 percent of children had received the MMR and polio vaccines by the time they entered kindergarten. That figure drops to less than 80 percent for both vaccines—the lowest rate in the country—in Alaska, where a measles outbreak could be devastating.

Rises in anti-vaccine sentiments have largely been linked to concerns that vaccines cause health issues, like the debunked claim that the MMR vaccine leads to kids being autistic. What parents may want to keep in mind is that polio and measles themselves are disabling conditions: according to the World Health Organization, 1 in 200 polio infections leads to irreversible paralysis. Children who get measles can experience symptoms including swelling of the brain. Death is always a possibility, too.

“Childhood vaccines have helped protect generations of Americans from potentially devastating vaccine-preventable diseases,” S. Wesley Long, a professor of pathology and genomic medicine at the Houston Methodist medical center, told Mother Jones. “Many of these diseases still exist around the world, and we rely on our collective immunity, often from childhood vaccines, to prevent these diseases from circulating in our population.”

The bill would strike language requiring that immunization records be submitted to child care agencies, but would keep those requirements for students enrolling in kindergarten through 12th grade. As of 2022, according to the nonprofit ChildCare Aware of America, there are some 700 licensed child care centers and homes in New Hampshire (which doesn’t require the Covid-19 vaccine for enrollment in child care, either, despite its efficiency in reducing both death rates and acute symptoms).

Vaccine hesitancy is rising among parents of young children. A 2023 survey from the Pew Research Center found that around half of parents with kids four or younger thought that not all standard childhood vaccines—a list that also includes hepatitis B, rotavirus, DTaP and chickenpox—may be necessary. Anti-vaccine misinformation plays a role in this phenomenon, which began before the Covid-19 pandemic, but has certainly increased since. In a 2019 UK report, about 50 percent of parents of young kids encountered false information about vaccines on social media.

While it’s nice when a beloved celebrity makes a comeback, comebacks of the very infectious measles and polio epidemics are less welcome. As New Hampshire’s state epidemiologist, Dr. Benjamin Chan, said during a state Senate hearing on the bill, “as vaccination levels decrease, this is putting our children and our communities and our childcare agencies at risk.”

Having had much older family members who survived polio with longterm side effects to their ability to get around who would have absolutely killed to get themselves a sugar cube with the polio vaccine this is especially awful and galling.

Republicans nationally just seem to be consistently embracing debunked conspiracy theory after debunked conspiracy theory as they're desperately trying to roll back the clocks to the early 1900's and undo over a century of progress.

This isn't even "We don't understand MRNA vaccines and damnit we're mad about that!", the polio and measles vaccines have been around and been incredibly safe for ages to the point where nobody today really knows much about polio because we fucking solved that stupid fucking problem.

Your health, your body and all but I'm not about to play around with shit like this that impacts others as well. It's gonna be exciting seeing polio outbreaks crop back up if this kinda shit actually moves ahead. Might be a good time to return to the iron lung industry and consider some innovations!

[Kaleredar]

Prejudice against science, willingness towards believing conspiratorial misinformation, and a general attitude of “you can’t tell me what to do.” All hallmarks of the GOP, all coagulating into vaccine denial.

[Shadowferal]

The one vaccine we all enjoyed taking. Wtf..

[Dead Moose Fandango]

Lock him in a fucking iron lung. Then he can see exactly what's coming if the polio vaccine goes away.

[rayvio]

how about this. before proposing or passing a law that involves science, people must demonstrate at least a high school or equivalent knowledge of said science and history of said science as well as being able to engage in a rational debate over whether the law would actually a: be a good idea or b: be an insane pit of crazy that would make even cthulhu think you're nuts
who am I kidding? if there was enough common sense in the world to get such a requirement put into place then we wouldn't NEED it

[D3thray]

Prejudice against science, willingness towards believing conspiratorial misinformation, and a general attitude of “you can’t tell me what to do.” All hallmarks of the GOP, all coagulating into vaccine denial.

uuuuh, not gonna jump into forbidden topics here but those qualities are hardly unique to the GOP…

On topic I blame the absolute bed shitting of the CDC during covid for a more recent rise in the anti-institutional sentiment that leads to distrust of vaccines. People don’t generally take well to being so publicly lied to. Even if everything else you say is above board it all gets treated as the same fruit of the poisonous tree.

[Kaleredar]

uuuuh, not gonna jump into forbidden topics here but those qualities are hardly unique to the GOP…

They’re the damn poster children for it.


Which party thinks the 2020 election was stolen?

Which party thinks that the Covid vaccine gave you 5G? And that you needed to take bleach or horse dewormer?

Which party denies climate change?

And that’s just off the top of my head.

Even if that’s not all members of the party, the others in the party are too chickenshit/apathetic to call these bald faced lies believed and spread by their other members exactly that. They tolerate the crazy and conspiratorial even if they don’t actively believe.

Case in point: democrats aren’t the ones rebelling against the polio vaccine here, now are they?


Thankfully we banned DDT, asbestos and lead paint back when people had some sense or today republicans would be screaming bloody murder about the free market and telling people to go out and pour lead paint down storm drains to “stick it to the libs.”

On topic I blame the absolute bed shitting of the CDC during covid for a more recent rise in the anti-institutional sentiment that leads to distrust of vaccines. People don’t generally take well to being so publicly lied to. Even if everything else you say is above board it all gets treated as the same fruit of the poisonous tree.

The cdc was operating on what knowledge they had access to and formulating regulations and suggestions based on such. If you’re throwing a tizzy about the effectiveness of masks and being whiny about being made to wear one… I don’t know what to tell you, bud.

In the other end of the spectrum we have the polio vaccine that has been around for decades. We have people that were born and have grown into healthy adults who got it. We have people who got it who have had healthy children. We have people who got it whose children got it and said children went on to have their own healthy children.


This is textbook republican paranoia. The fringe group of mocked “antivaxx” liberals are a practically non-existent entity these days, because liberals rightly laughed most them out of existence during Covid.

[Jessicka]

uuuuh, not gonna jump into forbidden topics here but those qualities are hardly unique to the GOP…

On topic I blame the absolute bed shitting of the CDC during covid for a more recent rise in the anti-institutional sentiment that leads to distrust of vaccines. People don’t generally take well to being so publicly lied to. Even if everything else you say is above board it all gets treated as the same fruit of the poisonous tree.

Reminder, during Covid you had a President telling people to drink bleach instead of getting a vaccine. What the fuck any national institution is meant to do in the face of that, I have no idea, but blaming the CDC for shitting the bed is off the mark.

[Edge-]

On topic I blame the absolute bed shitting of the CDC during covid

Did they? I don't recall this, exactly. I recall most of the problems in this regard coming from a weak executive leader who was to worried about appearances and was often undercutting agencies.

Also, unsure how the CDC making mistakes directly relates to vaccines that the CDC does not produce or distribute? Can you make that connection for me?

for a more recent rise in the anti-institutional sentiment that leads to distrust of vaccines.

I'll note the only people who have become "anti-medicine" as of recent years are mostly Republicans, especially those pushing for policies based off these beliefs. Also that the rise of "anti-institutional" sentiment is most frequently seen as part of the general conservative anti-government sentiment.

Either way unsure how "institutions bad" means "vaccines bad" unless "doctors" are that institution or something.

People don’t generally take well to being so publicly lied to.

They absolutely do, especially if it's the lie they want. For example - https://www.prri.org/spotlight/after...t-republicans/

artisan beliefs in the “Big Lie” have changed little from 2021 (when 66% of Republicans, 27% of independents, and 4% of Democrats believed the 2020 election was stolen) to 2023 (63% of Republicans, 31% of independents, and 6% of Democrats).

The "Big Lie" has been extremely thoroughly debunked, yet a majority of Republicans still choose the comforting lie over the truth.

Also, we see that Americans, especially Republicans, are incredibly bad at spotting lies and dishonesty to boot.

Even if everything else you say is above board it all gets treated as the same fruit of the poisonous tree.

This is a fairly extremist position to take, even if you're just expressing that it's one people may hold and not one you believe.

[Strange One]

uuuuh, not gonna jump into forbidden topics here but those qualities are hardly unique to the GOP…
.

Why is fear of forbidden topics always code for " I have nothing to back up my following statement but I wanna say it anyway"

Just how much fucking bleach did you drink?

[Sunseeker]

"Left wing" anti-vaxxers tend to be in the camp of "mother earth will heal us if we only align our chakras". They tend to be white, college educated and upper middle class. They have about as much say in governmental policy making as vegans, and have little to no institutional representation, and see regular push back from the left at large.

Right Wing "anti-vaxxers" comprise large swaths of the GOP voterbase, run the gamut of poor to wealthy, uneducated to highly educated, and see wide support from their representatives and the Party at large. Their position is rooted in anti-government conspiratorial nonsense, or just plain cruelty, ie: "some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make". They see wide support in legislative policy and "news media" supporting their general ignorance or assholetry.

So no, "anti vax" sentiments are not unique to the right. Their representation on the right however, is vastly stronger and widely promoted in a way that IS unique to the right.

So this "both sides" bullshit can fuck right off. The Right actively and forcefully engages in, as this thread is an example of, promoting baseless nonsense for their own electoral gain, without regard to the very real harm it is causing to the country.

[Edge-]

"Left wing" anti-vaxxers tend to be in the camp of "mother earth will heal us if we only align our chakras". They tend to be white, college educated and upper middle class. They have about as much say in governmental policy making as vegans, and have little to no institutional representation, and see regular push back from the left at large.

This was a thing in California for a hot second - upper middle class, college educated, liberal folks who were turning antivax. Not even necessarily because of hippy stuff or anything, they just thought they were smart.

I can't say I've seen any reporting on it in the last like...decade maybe (?) indicating it's still or ever was really a "thing" especially as we don't really have much in the way of policy created around it to your point.

[Strange One]

This was a thing in California for a hot second - upper middle class, college educated, liberal folks who were turning antivax. Not even necessarily because of hippy stuff or anything, they just thought they were smart.

I can't say I've seen any reporting on it in the last like...decade maybe (?) indicating it's still or ever was really a "thing" especially as we don't really have much in the way of policy created around it to your point.

For Australia, before the alt-right were a thing we had two camps of highly unvaccinated populations. The first was extremely low socioeconomic areas (mostly aboriginal) due to poor access etc. and the 2nd was extremely affluent areas with a hippy culture who were big into pseudo science. Neither were driving by conspiracy theories unlike the current right.

[Sunseeker]

This was a thing in California for a hot second - upper middle class, college educated, liberal folks who were turning antivax. Not even necessarily because of hippy stuff or anything, they just thought they were smart.

I can't say I've seen any reporting on it in the last like...decade maybe (?) indicating it's still or ever was really a "thing" especially as we don't really have much in the way of policy created around it to your point.

Ultimately, IME, they drifted right over time, drawn in by 5G, Flouride, and other "libertarian" conspiracy circles designed specifically to draw these folks in, or they turned 40, had a medical issue, and realized modern medicine rocks. Ie: they grew out of it.

Because fundamentally, a lot of their anti-vax views were founded in a very white, very American, very moneyed perception of the world. And one party very much plays to these notions.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

This was a thing in California for a hot second - upper middle class, college educated, liberal folks who were turning antivax. Not even necessarily because of hippy stuff or anything, they just thought they were smart.

I can't say I've seen any reporting on it in the last like...decade maybe (?) indicating it's still or ever was really a "thing" especially as we don't really have much in the way of policy created around it to your point.

My Ex-best friends Ex-wife was like that for a few years...really bought into the whole "Vaccines cause Autism" thing for a bit. Took her a while but eventually she saw through it all. During Covid she was like "guys, I can understand why you'd feel like this about vaccines but..." to any anti-vaxxers she had dealings with.

[s_bushido]

My Ex-best friends Ex-wife was like that for a few years...really bought into the whole "Vaccines cause Autism" thing for a bit. Took her a while but eventually she saw through it all. During Covid she was like "guys, I can understand why you'd feel like this about vaccines but..." to any anti-vaxxers she had dealings with.

Yeah, anti-vaxx stuff used to be fairly bipartisan/apolitical. Then Republican lunatics turned it into a culture war talking point during covid, and here we are... Contrarian dipshits are going to be the death of our species, I swear.