Legislation proposed in California would require all students in K-12 schools to get vaccinated against COVID beginning January 23, 2023 in order to receive in-person instruction. Parents could no longer invoke personal beliefs as a reason to not vaccinate their children, since the bill only allows children with granted medical exemptions to forgo the shot.
The “Keep Schools Open and Safe Act” (SB-871) was introduced by Senator Dr. Richard Pan on Monday, January 24. Per Pan’s website, the purpose of the bill is “to close the personal belief exemption loophole for school-based vaccination requirements for COVID-19.”
Pan noted in the announcement, “As the parent of two school students, I understand parents need confidence and certainty that their child’s school is safe and can be in-person.” He called COVID vaccination of students and staff “the most effective way to keep schools open and safe,” but added that the universal vaccination should be used in conjunction with other measures such as masking, testing, and good ventilation.
According to the announcement, the bill is building on California’s 2015 Senate Bill No. 277, also sponsored by Pan, which eliminated the personal belief exemptions for all other childhood vaccinations required for public and private school students. “After passage of SB 277, vaccination rates dramatically increased for childhood diseases such as measles,” Pan boasted.
Claiming that “children have rights as well,” the senator told the San Francisco Chronicle that “if you choose not to vaccinate your child, there’s a consequence.”
Despite the confirmed fact — even admitted by U.S. health authorities — that the vaccines prevent neither infection nor transmission, Pan believes that unvaccinated students pose a threat to their vaccinated peers.
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced in October 2021 that all K-12 students in the Golden State must get their COVID shots once the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fully approves the vaccines for their age groups. While that may happen as soon as June 1, according to the Chronicle, that is not enough for Pan, since the governor’s mandate still allows for parents to opt out based on their beliefs.
“Gov. Newsom got out front, he issued his executive order, but a state law would make it much more certain and less likely to be challenged in court,” Pan told the Sacramento Bee, likely referring to the San Diego and Los Angeles unified school districts already being sued for their vaccine mandates.
Therefore, to “cement” Newsom’s diktat and make it harder for parents to challenge it, Pan intends to make it a law.
According to the Bee, Pan’s bill is still in the works. For example, Pan said that his bill would go further than Governor Newsom’s order and would allow use of not only those vaccines fully approved by the FDA, but also those that only have emergency use authorization (EUA), i.e., those considered “investigational” or “experimental.”
The senator is also pondering how many vaccine doses a child would need to be considered fully vaccinated, or, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now putting it, “up to date” with their shots.
Last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced that her agency is “pivoting [its] language” in regard to vaccination status. Walenski said that being “up to date” with your shots “means if you recently got your second dose, you’re not eligible for a booster, you’re up to date. If you are eligible for a booster and you haven’t gotten it, you’re not up to date and you need to get your booster in order to be up to date.”
Per the CDC’s most current recommendation, everyone 12 and older who received two doses of Pfizer should come back for a third dose “at least 5 months after the last dose in their primary series.”
“Parents need to speak up for choice and legislators need to actually represent the will of the people,” said Sharon McKeeman, founder of Let Them Choose, a group that is suing the San Diego school district over its student vaccination mandate.
McKeeman added that Pan’s proposal is unconstitutional, since it would “keep kids out of school over an EUA vaccine that doesn’t even prevent infection.”
California Democratic lawmakers are so determined to get a needle into every arm that they recently introduced a bill to allow adolescents aged 12 to 17 to receive any vaccine — including COVID shots — without parental consent.
The proposal, called the “Teens Choose Vaccines Act,” was unveiled last week by state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). Weiner argued that kids already can access birth-control and abortion pills; treatment for sexually transmitted infections and drug- and alcohol-related disorders; and other drugs without checking with parents first, so why not let them decide for themselves to get an experimental vaccine?
Wiener also complained that those parents who are against vaccinating their children put them at risk, implying that the government knows what’s best for those children. Plus, “working or otherwise busy parents” sometimes simply have no time to take their children to the doctor.
Many California parents continue to protest COVID vaccine mandates for school students, faculty, and staff in the San Diego and LA Unified school districts.
