Lawmakers urge people to get vaccinated, then pass bill preventing mandatory vaccines
Several members of the Kentucky Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee on Wednesday urged Kentuckians to get vaccinated for COVID-19 when they are eligible.
Then they voted to preemptively prevent the state from mandating vaccines during an epidemic.
“Let me just say right off, I am not an anti-vaxxer,” said state Sen. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green. “You would have thought I was a pin cushion when I was in the Marine Corps getting ready to go overseas.”
Senate Bill 8 would change the law so that if Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration issued an executive order requiring people to get a vaccine during an epidemic, people could refuse based on religious beliefs, “conscientiously held beliefs” or the advice of their medical provider.
Wilson, who has already received one dose of the vaccine, sponsored the bill because many of his constituents have told him that they do not want to be made to take the coronavirus vaccine.
“Currently that is not something that is happening,” Wilson said. “The cabinet has not exercised their ability to mandate that, nor has the governor through an executive order and they say they will not. In the future though, we wanted to make sure they have an exemption.”
It is extremely difficult to require anyone to take a COVID-19 vaccine at this stage in the pandemic. So far, there have only been two vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — one made by Pfizer-Biontech and one made by Moderna. Both vaccines have emergency use authorization, not full authorization. The Pfizer vaccine is only approved for people older than 16 and the Moderna vaccine is only approved for people older than 18.
Under that level of authorization, employers can’t require their employees to get the vaccine. It also can’t yet be added to the list of mandatory vaccines for schools.
Plus, there is a supply issue. The state can’t currently meet the demand for vaccine and shots are largely limited to people who are older than 70, K-12 school employees, health care workers and first responders. So far, the state has received 466,700 doses of vaccine and only 58,070 Kentuckians are fully vaccinated, according to the Kentucky Department of Public Health.
A spokesman for Beshear, Sebastian Kitchen, said the governor does not plan to require vaccinations.
“The Governor supports the ongoing efforts at every level to vaccinate Kentuckians and has received the vaccination,” Kitchen said. “As the Governor has stated repeatedly, the state will not mandate vaccinations.”
Sen. Ralph Alvarado, R-Winchester, is a physician. He, too, has already received the vaccine and said he’d like to see a day where everyone is vaccinated.
“We have a generation that’s often grown up without seeing and witnessing a lot of the ugly diseases and disorders that plagued this country and the world for a long time,” Alvarado said. “I’d like to get to 100 percent vaccination.”
At the same time, Alvarado said, he believes there is a fine line when government gets involved. He said he supports isolating people who have the disease, but that prevention is a different matter.
“We can’t really force people to do the prevention, they have to make that decision themselves,” Alvarado said. “This provides choice for people.”
The bill was originally criticized by a large group of medical providers, many of whom were upset that it included language allowing students at public schools to be exempted from vaccines if their parents had conscientiously held beliefs (exemptions for religious beliefs and medical reasons already exist).
A committee substitute was filed to address those concerns, but it was not immediately available to the public.
Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, was the only “no” vote on the bill in committee, citing the fact that the medical community opposed the bill. He seized on the fact that the sponsors said the bill “preserved the status quo.”
“They say it will preserve the status quo, but why are we passing legislation if all it does is preserve the status quo?” McGarvey said. “I’m not going to pass a bill that says Derby Day should be the first Saturday in May.”
The bill will now go to the full Senate for a vote.
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 12:28 PM.
