Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) is defending the state’s vaccine exemption standards following a measles outbreak. Polis said he believes vaccinations work and are important, however, he stopped short of supporting increased vaccine exemption restrictions.
“It’s important that parents vaccinate their children, but you can’t do that at the point of a gun,” Polis told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton during an interview on “Rising.”
“When the government tries to force parents to do this, it creates distrust in both vaccinations and distrust in government,” he added.
Public health experts say that lower vaccine rates are causing increased measles cases throughout the country. States are under pressure to increase vaccine exemption standards, but supporters of parental rights and liberty believe this is largely government overreach.
Rep. Kyle Mullica (D) is currently writing a bill that eliminates the ability for parents to gain a personal choice exemption. Gov. Polis is opposed to the bill because he feels it eliminates parental rights.
“Most states have a waiver process that’s slightly different in different states, and yet Colorado has a lower rate and so clearly we need to change some of our policies to try to encourage people to do what’s best for their kids,” Polis said.
Colorado is also considering allowing teenagers to get vaccines without parental permission as a way to increase immunization rates. The state may also deploy a public awareness campaign that encourages pregnant women to get vaccinated.
How about giving us the right to sue the pharmaceutical companies again. Then maybe you can earn a little of our trust back.
This dispatch reeks of “vaccines are good” prejudice, with encouragement to increase vaccination rates, even to legal compulsion (actively pushed by Democrats), going around parents’ authority to involve teenagers, and vaccinating pregnant women. These are the kind of antics that converted me from a neutral observer into an anti-vaxxer.
If we pull the vaxxers’ “party line” into the light, its fallacious logic emerges clearly: (1) all vaccines are (2) fully effective and (3) safe for administration (4) at any age (5) to virtually everybody, (6) because everybody will react the same way to vaccines, so (6) no reason exists to hesitate to inoculate everybody ASAP (7) because we “experts” already know everything we need to know. But ample evidence exists that, AT BEST, EVERY ONE of these things is only PARTLY TRUE.
I strongly recommend that you readers from Colorado encourage your Governor to stand firm as he opposes governmental overreach.