To AG Cameron: We need more vaccine mandates, not fewer. Starting with public schools.
It’s easy to understand why Attorney General Daniel Cameron would join ongoing lawsuits to stop President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal workers and contractors — it’s the clear symbolic but ultimately hollow move for anyone in the MAGA crowd with aspirations to higher office and it won’t require much time as it wends its way through the courts. A required bang for not too many bucks.
Of course, it’s only thanks to the MAGA crowd that vaccine mandates are being considered, because so many of the MAGAvolk have so poisoned the well against a miraculous, life-saving vaccine. With predictable results, according to the New York Times, which found that cumulative COVID deaths are much higher in counties that voted for Trump. (No, please don’t send me any screeds about the VAERS database or whatever else because at this point if you think the vaccine is dangerous then you probably also thought JFK Jr. was going to reappear in Dallas last week.) The point of vaccines, which I shouldn’t have to remind anyone, is that they protect the individual, and then all those inoculated people create herd immunity for babies or people who can’t get the shot. It’s pretty basic science that is being totally ignored. Because so many people are refusing to get vaccinated, the COVID-19 virus will continue to fester in our population, possibly leading to a mutant version that can’t be slowed down with a simple shot.
What I don’t understand is where this leads next. Kentucky currently requires that every public school student be immunized for a host of (once deadly) diseases, like measles, mumps, polio, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. Those vaccines are mandated. Most private schools require them too. Are those state vaccine mandates unconstitutional, too? Chicken pox parties may be fun, but a recurrence of diphtheria, a once prevalent disease where a film of mucus covered the back of the throat until it was hard to breathe, would surely not be.
We don’t need fewer vaccine mandates, we need more. Why haven’t any been applied to public school employees? Gov. Andy Beshear, facing a tough election in 2023, was not going to do it, but local districts could certainly choose to do so. Jefferson County appears to be the only district in the state that has required employees to get vaccinated or face bi-weekly testing.
This should be a no-brainer. It seems a little nuts that mask and quarantine protocols are protecting unvaccinated teachers, even though they had access to both vaccines and boosters well early in the process. It’s wonderful that Fayette County is now offering the Test to Stay program in all elementary and middle schools, which will cut out lengthy and disruptive quarantines for children. But surely it would be good to know that a child’s teacher is not a vector for the disease, allowing to get back to all the way normal life, maybe even without masks.
We don’t even know how many educators are vaccinated, which surely would be a useful metric. Yes, COVID-19 appears to be on a downswing. But wouldn’t it be good to prepared for when if and when it comes roaring back?
