California has a new vaccine law, and based on the media coverage, a lot of folks still don’t understand what it does or how to report about vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement…
“Other opponents say the law tries to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”
Elizabeth Aguilera on Five Things to Know About California’s New Vaccine Law
As is typically the case, the problem is false balance.
Five Things to Know About the Reporting on California’s New Vaccine Law
Before we talk about what California’s new vaccine law does, let’s remind folks about what it doesn’t do.
What does the new law do?
It doesn’t eliminate all exemptions, stop doctors from writing medical exemptions, require all exemptions to be reviewed, or revoke all medical exemptions.
It simply helps stop providers who are writing inappropriate vaccine exemptions – or at least keep them from writing more than four inappropriate vaccine exemptions.
How did we get here?
It is no surprise how California ended up passing two vaccine laws in four years.
The state has a problem with clusters of unvaccinated kids. Unfortunately, the first vaccine law, SB277, didn’t fix the issue, as some providers found that they could get around it by writing unnecessary medical exemptions.
Some even found that they could make money writing these exemptions!
The vast majority of kids are vaccinated, so what’s the big deal?
While it is great if a state has high immunization rates, that doesn’t mean as much if half the kids in your child’s school are unvaccinated.
This is known as a breakdown of herd immunity.
It puts kids at risk to get a vaccine-preventable disease, especially if they have a true medical exemption.
Are vaccines dangerous, as some critics say?
Vaccines are safe, with few risks.
What is dangerous, are the folks who push misinformation about vaccines that scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids. Why don’t we hear more stories about them in the media?
So is this fight over now?
While this should be a time when everyone starts to learn about why vaccines are safe and necessary, unfortunately, some are doubling down and still don’t want to vaccinate and protect their kids.
That might change if instead of simply printing what the opposition says in the spirit of being balanced, the media ever actually fact checks what the opponents to SB 276 and other vaccine laws have been doing and saying…
More On Reporting About Vaccines
- Has Bobby Kennedy Taken Over the Anti-Vaccine Movement?
- Is SB 276 a Civil Rights Issue?
- About That Johns Hopkins Protocol of Immunocompromised Kids…
- Do 54% of Children Have a Chronic Health Condition?
- Who Are the Medically Fragile Children?
- Fact Checking the Truth About Vaccination Rates in California
- More Questions to Help You Become a Vaccine Skeptic
- California vaccine medical exemptions – SB276 and SB714 restricts abuse
- Antivaxers in the wake of SB 276 and SB 714
- The long, strange road to passing SB 276 appears to be near its end…finally
- The So-Called Vaccine Debate: False Balance in The San Diego Union-Tribune
- The L.A. Times: Painfully false balance on antivax pediatrician Dr Bob Sears