While drugmakers around the world are scrambling to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus, at least two Louisiana lawmakers are pushing bills in the upcoming legislative session that would loosen immunization requirements for schools and workplaces.
HB 308 by Rep. Kathy Edmonston, R-Gonzales, would exempt first-time students from having to be immunized in order to enroll in school if they or their parents provide a written dissent objecting to vaccinations. The exemption would also apply to students who provide a written doctor’s note stating they cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
A separate provision in the bill requires schools to notify students and their parents of the no-vaccine option.
HB 642 by Rep. Beryl Amedee, R-Houma, meanwhile, would extend similar rights to vaccine opponents in the workplace by banning employers from requiring that employees be immunized, provided the employee presents a written dissent objecting to vaccinations or a doctor’s note indicating a medical reason they cannot be vaccinated.
Still another Amedee-sponsored measure, HB 467, would require providers to make patients and the parents of minor patients aware of all potential side effects of a vaccine prior to administering it.
The bills, by two conservative Republican lawmakers, reflect an anti-vaccination movement that has been spread in certain segments of the far-right media and largely debunked by the medical establishment.
At a meeting Wednesday of the Baton Rouge Rotary Club, Dr. Susan Bankston, a local pediatrician, warned against the dangers of falling for such unfounded medical theories and the large-scale public health threat they pose.
Newly elected Rep. Barbara Freiburg, who attended the meeting, says she is very concerned about the bills, similar versions of which were proposed in the 2019 session and ultimately defeated.
“They are basing their arguments on data that is not sound, that really doesn’t have a sound basis in any science or medicine,” Freiberg says. “That is what concerns me.”
When the issue came up in 2019, state health officials testified they were worried about the growing number of Louisianans rejecting vaccinations for their children amid a resurgence of measles throughout the country.
Now that a new and potentially more lethal virus is spreading throughout the country, Freiberg says it’s more important than ever that policymakers and the public listen to scientific experts, not political conspiracy theorists.
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