After being shut down by the state legislature, opponents of California’s mandatory vaccine law have resorted to calling for the recall of the SB277’s champion, Democratic Senator Richard Pan.
A campaign to recall Pan has been cleared to advance to the signature-gathering phase. Proponents have until Dec. 31 to collect 35,926 verified signatures from the 436,318 registered voters in his district.
“It is not so much about the vaccinations as it is about the defense of liberty,” Katherine Duran, an Elk Grove stay-at-home parent told the Sacramento Bee. “The government, as a creature of the people, doesn’t have the right to tell the people what they can and can’t put into their bodies.”
Responding the vaccine bill’s opponents, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a video reiterating the importance of vaccines. But more importantly, in the public service-type announcement he attacked one of the main pieces of misinformation that the anti-vaccine movement hangs on to:
Not vaccinating your children doesn’t just affect your own kids, it affects other kids too. Consider this: Some people cannot get immunized for medical reasons; for example, due to an allergic reaction or a compromised immune system. And a small percentage of people won’t develop immunity, even though they receive the vaccine.
These children and adults who cannot receive or do not respond to vaccines, rely on the rest of us to be vaccinated, in order to protect them from exposure to life threatening illnesses.
It’s called ‘herd immunity,’ and it’s based on a concept that we are part of a social structure that requires us to take responsibility for one another.
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