Tag: mandates

New Vaccine Laws and Mandates

Every good vaccine bill doesn't make it into law.
NY passed a law in 2015 that  eliminated religious exemptions to getting vaccines.

California passed a new vaccine law, SB 277, in 2015.

Most states, including California, already had vaccine mandates though. The difference now is that in California, you need a medical exception to attend school if your kids aren’t vaccinated.

With the passage of SB 277, California joined Mississippi and West Virginia as the only states that do not allow either religious or personal belief vaccine exemptions.

They still aren’t forcing anyone to get vaccinated though.

“The term mandate is somewhat misleading, because there are exceptions — always on medical grounds, frequently on religious grounds, and sometimes on philosophical grounds. Moreover, the thrust of mandates is not to forcibly require vaccination but to predicate eligibility for a service or benefit on adherence to the recommended immunization schedule of vaccination. ”

Y. Tony Yang on Linking Immunization Status and Eligibility for Welfare and Benefits Payments

And in some countries that already have mandates, they aren’t even doing a very good job of making sure that kids even get vaccinated. Many people will be surprised to learn that 14 European countries already mandate one or more vaccines, typically DTP, polio, and MMR.

What’s New in Vaccine Laws

Internationally, the idea of vaccine mandates is a big issue as we continue to see outbreaks of measles in Europe and other areas of the world.

“Parents who vaccinate their children should have confidence that they can take their children to child care without the fear that their children will be at risk of contracting a serious or potentially life-threatening illness because of the conscientious objections of others. ”

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on “No Jab No Pay”

Unlike the Disneyland outbreak in California, the outbreaks in Europe are on a much bigger scale.

And with more cases we see what everyone fears – more deaths.

That’s why we are finally seeing new vaccine laws, including some that mandate vaccines in some other countries, including:

  • Australia – the Australian government began a “No Jab No Pay” plan in 2016 that removed the conscientious objector exemption on children’s vaccination for access to taxpayer funded Child Care Benefits, the Child Care Rebate and the Family Tax Benefit Part A end of year supplement.
  • Estonia – A proposal was put before the Estonian Parliament, the Riigikogu, to make immunizations compulsory.
  • Germany – a new law, if approved (it has already passed the Bundestag or national parliament), will require parents to have a medical consultation before deciding to delay or skip vaccines or they can be fined up to $2,800. Even with the law, in Germany, “vaccinations remain voluntary. But some politicians have suggested that mandatory vaccination is on the way if concerted efforts to encourage vaccinations don’t work.”
  • Italy – the Italian Parliament has given final approval to the Decree-Law Containing Urgent Measures on the Compulsory Vaccination of Children, which makes vaccinations against 12 diseases mandatory for children as a condition of school registration, for both private and public schools.
  • France – is working to expand their list of mandated vaccines to now include protection against 11 diseases instead of just three (diphtheria, tetanus, and polio). All of these vaccines were previously recommended to attend school, but were only voluntary.
  • Romania – a draft Vaccination Law could bring fines to parents who don’t vaccinate their kids and would keep them out of schools. Doctors could be fined too! The draft law is headed to Parliament for debate.

Again, none of these laws mean that anyone is being forced to vaccinate their kids.

Even in the case of vaccine mandates, they are simply requirements to attend daycare or school.

We are also seeing some new vaccine laws in the United States, including changes for the start of the 2017-2018 school year:

  • Indiana – pharmacists can give more vaccines, any vaccine that the CDC recommends, either with a prescription or by protocol for kids over are at least 11 years old and adults
  • Iowa – now requires a meningococcal vaccine for students entering 7th (one dose) and 12th (one or two doses) grades
  • Nevada – now requires a meningococcal vaccine for students entering 7th grade (one dose) and college (a dose after age 16 years)
  • Pennsylvania – unvaccinated students now only have a 5 day grace period at the start of the school year to get vaccinated (it used to be 8 months) before getting expelled from school.

It’s easy to navigate the new laws.

Get educated and get your kids vaccinated. Vaccines are safe, vaccines work, and vaccines are necessary.

What To Know About Vaccine Mandate Laws

Vaccine mandate laws are expanding as we are seeing more outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases.

More Information on Vaccine Mandate Laws:

Updated August 20, 2017

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Slogans of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey went on a mission to Green Our Vaccines in 2008.
Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey went on a mission to Green Our Vaccines in 2008.

We know that there is no science to support the anti-vaccine movement.

History isn’t on their side either.

So what’s left?

How do they push misinformation and myths about vaccines to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids?

Slogans of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

In addition to their celebrities and a relative handful of ‘experts,’ the modern antivaccine movement makes effective use of very catchy slogans to scare people away from getting educated about vaccines and vaccinating their kids.

If there is a RISK, there must be a CHOICE.

This is one of the more recent and also one of the more powerful slogans that we have seen. It implies that the choice over skipping or delaying vaccines is being taken away and that the only risk comes from the vaccines themselves.

But like most slogans used as propaganda tools, there is little behind it.

Parents nearly always have a choice on whether or not to vaccinate their kids, even if they live in a state without non-medical exceptions.

Vaccine mandates are laws that say you must be fully vaccinated to attend school. Instead of homeschooling their intentionally unvaccinated kids, some parents think that they must have even more choices though.

In addition to overestimating the risks from vaccines, these folks greatly underestimate the risks of getting a vaccine-preventable disease from skipping vaccines, both to their own kids and to the rest of us in the community.

They are simply increasing our risk and limiting our choices to keep our own kids safe and healthy.

You can always get Vaccinated, but you can never get Unvaccinated.

This slogan is likely a surprise to all of the folks who push (sell) regimens that claim to detox kids of their vaccines, or more specifically, all of the “toxins, poisons, and chemicals” that were supposedly in the vaccines they got.

It is also a sad reminder to all of those families who skipped or delayed a vaccine a little too long – long enough for their child to get a life-threatening vaccine-preventable disease.

This slogan really just highlights the fact that anti-vaccine do not really understand the risks of delaying or skipping vaccines. That’s despite the fact that studies have shown that following a non-standard, parent-selected, delayed protection vaccine schedule simply puts kids at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases, without any benefits of fewer side effects.

And for the record, you can get unvaccinated. It is one of the reasons that herd immunity is so important. Just ask the parents of any child who has had to have chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant and is now immunosuppressed.

Green Our Vaccines.

Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey led the “Green Our Vaccines” rally back in 2008.

In 2008, Jenny McCarthy ran a full page ad in USA Today warning about toxins, autism, and the "whopping increase" in vaccines kids were getting.
In 2008, Jenny McCarthy ran a full page ad in USA Today warning about toxins, autism, and the “whopping increase” in vaccines kids were getting.

Although they always claimed they were not anti-vaccine, they helped pushed the idea that vaccines were full of toxins.

They aren’t.

Vaccine ingredients are safe.

Too many, Too soon.

Jenny McCarthy can likely also be credited with creating with idea that kids get too many vaccines at too early an age.

Our kids certainly do get more vaccines than they did in the 1970s and 80s, but that simply means more protection from vaccine-preventable diseases that used to be killers, like Haemophilus influenzae type b and Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Today’s vaccines have fewer antigens than ever too, even though kids get more vaccines than they used to. But certainly not more than they can easily and safely handle.

Vaccination is not Immunization.

This idea is pushed by a chiropractor, who also talks about “pure blood.”

If you believe that vaccination is not immunization, then how did vaccines help eradicate smallpox and how are they helping to eliminate and control other vaccine preventable diseases, like polio, measles, and rubella, etc.

And that’s the whole point. Many anti-vaccine folks don’t really believe that vaccines work. That helps them justify their decision to skip or delay vaccinating their kids.

Even if you thought that vaccines had too many side effects, if you also admitted that they worked to protect your kids, then your anti-vaccine views would likely produce a high level of cognitive dissonance. So instead you cling to these types of slogans. And if your kid does get a vaccine-preventable disease, you’ll still feel okay, because you will blame it on shedding from someone who just got vaccinated.

I’m not anti-vaccine, I’m pro-safe vaccine

The problem with this slogan, and in general, using it as an anti-vaccine argument, is that vaccines are safe. They are not 100% safe, but no one claims that they are.

Serious side effects from vaccines are very rare though.

People who rally against already safe vaccines, claiming that they say are full of ‘toxins’ and wanting even safer vaccines before they will vaccinate their kids, are not really pro-vaccine.

Neither are any of the folks who push these slogans, all of which are pure anti-vaccine propaganda.

What to Know About the Slogans of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Catchy slogans are one of the ways that the anti-vaccine movement uses to push  misinformation about vaccines.

More About Slogans of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

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Vaccine Exemptions

Vaccine exemptions to state mandates for immunizations can include medical exemptions, religious exemptions, and philosophical exemptions.

For information: