A wave of lawmakers who oppose vaccine requirements are winning elections for state legislatures amid a national drop in childhood vaccination rates and a resurfacing of preventable deadly diseases.
The victories come as part of a political backlash to pandemic restrictions and the proliferation of misinformation about the safety of vaccines introduced to fight the coronavirus.
In Louisiana, 29 candidates endorsed by Stand for Health Freedom, a national group that works to defeat mandatory vaccinations, won in the state’s off-year elections this fall.
Fred Mills, the retiring Republican chairman of the Louisiana Senate’s health and welfare committee, said he fears that once-fringe anti-vaccine policies that endanger people’s lives will have a greater chance of passing come January when newly-elected lawmakers are sworn in and more than a dozen Republican moderates like himself leave office.
The possiby worst part of this is that most -if not all- of these lawmakers probably don’t have a problem with vaccines and understand their importance. However, they just don’t give a shit about the human lives that stand between them and power and money.
They see gullible citizens that want to vote for stupid measures, so they offer to give them just that.