Louisiana Governor Mandates Vaccines for Students – Opinion

Despite no evidence showing that students could spread COVID-19 to schools, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is moving ahead with a requirement that all students receive a vaccine.

MMR vaccines and COVID-19 will now be required shots. However, parents can opt out as they do with the standard vaccines. The rule also only applies only to the ages vaccines have full FDA approval for – ages 16 to 18.

Edwards’ mandate, however, comes after a Louisiana House committee voted against it.

Gov. John Bel Edwards will add COVID-19 vaccinations to the school shot list. This is after overturning the vote of a panel of legislators last week that had voted to repeal the recommendation by the Louisiana Department of Health.

California and Louisiana were the only two states with mandated vaccines for school children according to testimony from the Louisiana Health and Welfare Committee.

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The governor sent a letter Tuesday to House Health and Welfare Committee Chairman Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall, informing him of the decision.

“One can only imagine where we would be as a state if the same overheated rhetoric from last week’s meeting was applied to polio or measles,” Edwards, a Democrat, wrote in his letter. “The development of the COVID-19 vaccines in time to help us put this pandemic behind us also requires us to do everything we can to add COVID-19 to the list of diseases that no longer pose a serious threat.”

The problem with Edwards’ rhetoric is that it doesn’t match reality.

Although polio and measles have been largely eliminated, they are still more deadly and dangerous for children. The in-person training has yet to result in mass spreader events at schools, and many schools are able to reopen safe. The rise in infections among students is evident in New Jersey. This is mostly due to behavior by parents and students outside schools. However, the incidence of infection among children under the age of 12 is much lower than it was among adults. Comorbidities are the common thread.

It is absurd to compare COVID-19 and the vaccines against polio to each other. COVID, which spreads like the flu more, is just as prevalent as it is in schools. It does not require schools to have a vaccine.

A lot of COVID’s reaction has been compared to PTSD by politicians, media and health officials. The coronavirus was a novel virus that struck quickly and caused a number of hospitals to be overwhelmed. It also killed many people. We weren’t prepared and the original wave showed that. However, we’re now better prepared. Now we know the basics of how this virus works and what to do to stop it from happening. The vaccines are effective. The booster has also been proven to be helpful. It is now much more simple to survive the infection than it was at the start. There have been many lessons learned and variants are far safer than the original.

Edwards is a Democratic governor doing the exact same thing as other Democratic governors because that’s his worldview. Edwards wants to make the government mandate more protection. He wants to use these mandates and this rhetoric to force or scare people into giving their kids the vaccine – a vaccine that the medical community has more disagreement over than the media would like you to believe.

It is a refusal to accept that there are no protections against all and that imposing more laws and regulations only leads to more violations. He does this because he feels that government should have the power to make sure everyone is safe. He refuses to acknowledge that people have the power and not politicians.

A note for Republicans living in Louisiana: You can do it!. Your stubbornness in how you’ve handled the last two gubernatorial elections led to this moment. You have a big government progressive as governor of a deep red state because you couldn’t keep your party together and unify behind a candidate. You couldn’t even recruit good candidates. It is what happened.

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