Ten years ago, on June 30, 2015, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB277, a ban on personal-choice vaccine exemptions crafted by California State Senator Richard Pan. Hundreds of people were lined up in person to oppose this legislation, but the California State Senate pushed it through anyway.
For the first time in California history, saying “I’m just not doing that” wasn’t enough, you had to have a medical exemption or religious exemption.
Religious exemptions are just personal belief exemptions. Secular people who had any issue with vaccines, and refused the wildly counterproductive therapy-speak interventions, were the only ones affected… unless they went back to church and got that exemption. Some even sought out churches who were publicly anti-vaccination.
I remember, at that time, watching people who at least didn’t go to church say they were looking for a church to get an exemption. I have little doubt this was a driving factor in the gassing up of nuttier religious organizations who grift off this subject, along with secular dissatisfaction (non-voting) in those who haven’t gone that far out of their way.
Democrats didn’t have to do that, it was pretty obvious something this would happen at the time. Now they’ve lost cultural influence and bodily rights in half the states – ironic. Hope the stodgy airheads who drove the party in this direction change who they down to the personal level in some way that will help fix the mess that gets left on America’s plate after the current administration has run its course.
Going on a mandate
There are two concepts at play here. Whether or not vaccines work, which is one argument. The second argument is whether or not governments have the political and social capital to implement mandatory vaccinations without extreme political consequences.
That first question is irrelevant at the moment and into the foreseeable future. Anyone who leans in on this aspect of the discussion is not to be viewed as serious. Doctors, researchers, etc are lead in on this question almost compulsively. I think this is expectable, due to their role existing to minimize harm, but I wouldn’t rule out any particular influencers being paid or stupid.
Public health institutions, whatever’s left of them or will be left of them in the near future, do not have the social capital to push vaccine mandates. Pushing said mandates destroys trust in public health, as anyone paying attention could’ve learned since the short-lived covid vaccine mandates on organizations with 100 or more employees. This was a key driver of Trump’s most avid supporters in 2016 and 2024, even if he’s betraying them now.
This is one of a few topics that has stunk up the reputation of Democrats to rather embarrassing levels across the country. If you have not realized this, go think about it until you do.
My general theory is short-sightedness. “I’m scared, I want to assuage this fear now and deal with the consequences later.” Now we’re at the consequences later part. In any case, there are more vaccine skeptics now than before the mandates and that’s the effect.
