CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWSOM PROVIDES A LONE LEGISLATIVE SESSION MYSTERY”
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWSOM PROVIDES A LONE LEGISLATIVE SESSION MYSTERY”
There
were few mysteries during the California Legislature’s just-concluded main
session of 2019. With majorities topping two-thirds in both the Assembly and
state Senate, the lawmakers fulfilled most of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign
promises from last year.
There
was action on housing, even if it likely won’t make much of a dent in
homelessness or the affordability crisis. Preschool education got a boost and
the outreach of government health insurance has been expanded. Plus a big move
to undermine the gig working economy. And much more.
But
there was one real mystery: Why did Newsom insist not just once, but twice
within three months, on watering down SB 276, the effort by the Legislature’s
only doctor to close loopholes allowing some children to avoid vaccinations
required for public school enrollment? Is the governor a closet anti-vaxxer,
even though he insists that all four of his children have been inoculated with
no problems? Or did he just want to simplify the measure?
The
bill eventually signed by Newsom was exponentially weaker than the original
version proposed by Democratic state Sen. Richard Pan of Sacramento, who is
vilified regularly by anti-vaccination activists and was even physically
assaulted by one on a street in his district. Back in 2015, Pan wrote the bill
that ended the religious exemption from vaccination requirements,
leaving medical waivers the only way parents can keep from vaccinating
their kids and still enroll them in schools. Ex-Gov. Jerry Brown signed that
one.
But
medical waivers quickly became a major loophole, leading some public schools to
have vaccination rates well below the 95 percent experts say is needed to
prevent the occasional epidemic of sometimes fatal diseases like measles,
rubella, pertussis and polio. That may be one reason California has experienced
several significant outbreaks in recent years, including 40 cases of measles
last spring, while national caseloads of diseases that were once thought
extinct have reached levels unseen in decades.
Hundreds,
maybe thousands, of parents sought out the very few doctors who believe the
unproven calumny that vaccinations can cause autism and other serious
reactions. Most such doctors charged about $300 to sign a medical exemption,
some allegedly without even seeing the children involved. One doctor, for
example, signed almost one-third of all medical exemptions in the
130,000-student San Diego Unified school district.
Pan
sought to close that loophole by having the state health department vet all
such waivers, okaying only those for children with organ transplants and a few
other conditions.
Newsom
bridled at that. In June, he said, “I don’t want…someone the governor appointed
making a decision that is very personal.” That seemingly put vaccinations in
the realm of personal choice rather than public health. But Pan revised his
bill so the vetting process would apply only to doctors who sign more than five
waivers in any year. That seemed to satisfy Newsom. So Pan’s bill – called a
“no-brainer” by one major Republican political consultant, cruised though the
Legislature.
Until late August, that is. Newsom
suddenly weighed in again, and now the law has been further weakened to apply
only to exemptions written after next Jan. 1. It also no longer requires
doctors to certify under penalty of perjury that what they’re saying is
accurate and it lets existing exemptions stand until children reach the next
grade level where updated vaccinations are required.
That’s
a huge softening of Pan’s original bill, all at Newsom’s insistence. Yet, two
requests for the governor to explain his motives (submitted through press
secretary Nathan Click) went unanswered. Newsom was questioned about it during
a press conference, though, and still did not explain. He said only that he
“felt that we needed to clarity some additional points…” and that “I’m proud I
listened to both sides of this debate…”
Does
this mean Newsom is devolving into a whimsical Donald Trump-like figure who
equates fly-by-night shibboleths promoted on social media with proven medical
science? Newsom won’t say, but did allow that it was a “novel thing” to be
questioned about his motives.
Newsom
surely doesn’t like being compared with Trump, and knows what he can do to
prevent it in the future. In the meantime, his motives on vaccination remain a
mystery.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visitwww.californiafocus.net
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