Rep. Joanne Osborne’s HB2086 would block all current and future COVID19 vaccines from being required vaccines for school children statewide. Good-bye, parental control and local input. Republicans want to dictate your future. No parents testified for or against this bill in committee, but on RTS, more than 300 people signed in against.
K-12 schools require vaccines for highly contagious diseases (like measles and chicken pox) that spread like wild fire in schools. The Republicans insisted that COVID is not a childhood disease and, therefore, is ineligible to be on the required school vaccine list. They claimed that parents and children were afraid of the vaccine (not COVID), and “kids don’t get that sick from COVID” so it’s no big deal. The Republican message to the children was, “Yeah, your grandpa died of this disease, but you won’t get that sick. Trust us. Suck it up.”
When I mentioned that Arizona has one of the worst COVID death rates in the country, one of the Republicans blew me off saying, “We’re talking about the VACCINE — not about COVID.” How can the topics be separated? The unvaccinated are dying at much higher rates.
The Republicans contended that eliminating potential, future vaccine mandates will calm the fears of children. Watching stubborn, anti-vax family members die is less traumatic than getting a shot? To clarify, the COVID vaccine is not currently on the K-12 shot list. Getting a vaccine on the shot list is a long and involved process that takes more than a year and includes lots of public comment. HB2086 is a preemption bill. It would effectively stop current and future directors of the Arizona Department of Health Services from even starting the process to put any COVID shot on the list because before they could even start the one-and-half year process they would have to overturn this law. If the massive death rate among the unvaccinated is not enough to convince the Republicans that Covid the real threat and not the vaccine, I don’t know what will.
Here is my vote explanation: “Although COVID is not a childhood disease, children do get COVID. Allowing for children and school staff to go to school unvaccinated will not dispel fear. It will increase fear and disease. It will increase rolling quarantines for students and staff. That will decrease learning and increase hassles for parents who have to stay home with sick children. Personal choice must be weighed with social responsibility. The Legislature has the responsibility to protect the public health. Arizona has one of the worst death rates in the US. Nationwide, there have been more than 900,000 deaths in the US. It is obvious that COVID death rates are significantly higher for the unvaccinated. Perhaps children are not dying from COVID at the same rate as adults, but children are losing their parents, grandparents, relatives and friends to COVID. These losses will increase fear and sadness in the hearts of children. With that I vote no.”
This video was recorded on February 7, 2022. All of my video updates are available on YouTube and Facebook.
UPDATE: HB2086 was signed into law by Governor Doug Ducey.