I just got called a clown on a FB post. For defending Matthew McConaughey’s statement against a child vaccine mandate.
Take a breath after maybe saying, “Well, you are a clown!” Or if you’re maybe saying instead, “Hells yeah we don’t need no vaccine mandates!” And hear me out.
I believe in the essentiality of vaccines. Grew up in the presence of a man crippled waist down by polio. I know the effect my grandmother’s young death of tuberculosis has had on my father’s side of the family. And I’m appreciative that polio, tuberculosis, and smallpox have all been conquered by vaccination.
But I also grew up with a girl whose lower right arm was shrunken, never developed beyond infancy, because of prenatal thalidomide. (Not a vaccine, but poorly understood medication.)
And to a lesser extent, I’m aware of the potential damage of both HPV and the HPV vaccine. That issue’s a harder call, but I can’t support a mandate.
COVID is an ongoing, deadly serious situation. I’m for a universal mask mandate. (What sort of backward country do we live in that it’s not already a thing?)
And I’m strongly in favor of COVID vaccine mandates by employers, including in government. (It’s called freedom. Employers are free to mandate them. You’re free to look for another job if you don’t like it.)
I’m mostly in favor of a COVID vaccine mandate for children 16 and up. It’s fully approved, and they’re hardly children.
But let’s consider the words “mandate,” for children 5-15, of a vaccine only “emergency authorized” for that age range.
I have two granddaughters next door aged 5 and 7. We all live in a remote part of Nebraska, 6 miles from hardtop in any direction, our adults all vaccinated, masked for any trip into town, disinfecting everything we bring back, and refusing to allow visits by even extended family members if they’re unvaccinated. And like many children in this time of COVID, those granddaughters are homeschooled.
Should it be mandated that they take an emergency authorized vaccine?
No.
But yours and mine? And masks? Abso-effing-lutely. Let’s stop clowning around.
Lester, vaccines are mandated for children should they attend school and here in Texas the current wave of people dying are now children. Who do you think is the most common vector for colds and the flu? Children. As all my friends with preteens are practically sick every month. Your comparison to thalidomide to this is also spurious, it was never approved in the US, it’s a mostly Canadian and European disaster. There has been extensive testing plus Covid-19 isn’t some, new alien virus. A vaccine came relatively quickly because it’s related to past viruses such as sars from 2009. People preaching wiggle room aren’t helping. It’s just as harmful as those who say if we feed the sharks one of us, they’ll exclude the rest of us so we can have our Freedumb.