In Wake of COVID Response, Massachusetts Attempts to Advance Childhood Vaccine Bills

The world’s a different place compared to when Sacramento Senator Richard Pan pushed through SB 277 in California. The bill signaled a start to an increasing legislative rush to remove all religious, medical, parental, and social barriers to getting injectable pharmaceutical products into the arms of children. 

The world is even still a different place compared to when, in 2017, the number of legislative bills to get shots in the arms of kids without regard to individual rights and Constitutional guarantees swelled to over 130 in 35 states.

The momentum which sustained such political and social fervor was thin, shallow, and fleeting. The robust debate was largely absent during those times. For a moment, such bills enjoyed a backdrop of air superiority from the legacy, mainstream media alongside health agencies which still, in much of the general public’s mind, carried authority and trust. The airwaves belonged to Big Pharma-influenced anchors and editors who crafted stories with shallow talking points and weaponized buzzwords aimed at neutralizing opposition to their liability-free injectable product lines. The science was settled back then. The scientific consensus agreed upon so we were told and it said vaccines were safe and effective. Injuries were one in a million. 

That’s all changed now.  

For the legacy media, health agencies like the CDC, and politicians floating vaccine-mandating legislation, those were the good ole days. Thanks, in part, to a disastrous COVID pandemic response from the above-mentioned players, the public trust in their reporting and recommendations is no longer a given.

At the very same moment, an alternative media apparatus, building slowly in the background for well over a decade, broke through the surface in spectacular fashion to catch a disillusioned public racing away from once-trusted sources. 

The playing field has changed and the starting lineup has been benched. Information from the CDC, HHS, FDA, and others are now being openly debated and questioned by the public as a matter of course in an attempt to re-level the social, cognitive, and scientific playing field. 

It was a sunny Boston morning in the Beacon Hill neighborhood where, just down the road at the Massachusetts State House, families were blindsided by a slew of vaccine-related bills scheduled for hearings. 

Enjoying one of the first and largest assaults of the post-COVID era, parents of the state now had to grapple with bills to eliminate religious exemptions to vaccination, allow minors of any age to consent to vaccinations without their parent’s consent, and see the addition of the HPV and Hepatitis A vaccines added to the list of required vaccines for a child to attend school. 

Of notable mention is a standalone bill that would protect the medical exemption to vaccination and the doctor writing it from repercussions. 

The first attempt at the hearings was delayed by an electrical fire in the basement of the state house. As a new date has now been set for Wednesday, July 26, it’s important to fully understand the moment we are in. 

In this post-COVID era, a growing portion of the public isn’t automatically on board with the idea of the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule nor are they thrilled about legislation to further push it upon children with little debate. The ideal and practice of individual and parental rights have surged in popularity after the authoritarian lengths governments went to over the last three years to get COVID shots in arms and mask kids. A time that Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch called “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

Only a minority of states have removed religious exemptions to vaccination. In addition, the courts have been aggressive at restoration during the assault on them during COVID with legal rulings in New York, the Marines, Air Force, Air National Guard, as well as an internal review by the Pentagon's Inspector General. 

In Mississippi, a historic legal ruling gave further evidence of the overall sea change as a court order afforded its residents a religious exemption for their children to attend school who aren’t fully vaccinated due to their faith.    

Currently, lawmakers in Arizona, Kansas, New York, and Maine are advancing bills to expand and restore (in the case of Maine and New York) religious exemptions.

Meanwhile, the subject of allowing minors, of any age, to consent to vaccination should cause the reader to pause. Essentially, the medical profession becomes the parent here for an injectable product with known harms and varied individual susceptibility to its adverse reactions for a child, again, of any age. A similar parental-eliminating law was tried in Washington D.C. in 2020 only to be halted by a lawsuit – and those lawmakers were only bold enough to lower the age consent bar to 11 years old.

States like Massachusetts who are continuing to push vaccine-related legislation from a business-as-usual stance as if COVID never happened may be in for a surprise. Picking back up from the pause of the last three years where the world forgot about ‘all those other shots’ as they were forced to hyper-focus on the journey of a rushed, experimental mRNA vaccine technology has seen parents come back to the table with a new awareness. Add to this the complete unwillingness, currently and historically, of medical and public health figures to engage in any debate on the several points of contention underpinning vaccine safety science. A rapidly educated and awakened public is activated like never before to openly debate and ask the common sense questions previously neutralized by media gatekeepers wielding discriminatory buzzwords, appeals to authority, and callous dismissals.