On the issue of Wuhan coronavirus vaccinations for students, Louisiana’s Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards keeps finding his ideology putting him into politically embarrassing situations.
Last year, Edwards went gung ho on making Louisiana only one of two states that would force schoolchildren to receive such a vaccination, unless parents opted out. His Department of Health promulgated a rule to take effect this fall to do that, then after a House of Representatives panel vetoed that he overruled it. His action fit the politicized nature that marked his policy-making in this area that sought to leverage the issue as a method to increase command and control by government over the citizenry.
However, the evidence against such unwise policy, clear then, became even more so as the calendar changed to this year. The “vaccine” isn’t one but merely a prophylactic that more often than not prevents virus contraction or reduces its impact; it doesn’t prevent transmission, and as the virus involves increasingly doesn’t even work as a prophylactic. And, as almost no children of school age contracting it suffered more than minor symptoms, much less died from it, there was little reason to make vaccination a default condition for attending classes. Worse, there still is medical uncertainty about whether the vaccines, the first ever based upon messenger RNA, have serious long-term side effects, most specifically heart conditions concerning male youths, posing questions that may take decades to resolve that makes discretion the better part of valor.
As the clock ticked towards the start of the school year and science continued to not affirm such a drastic step while public opinion grew more hostile to it – culminating with a near-miss in the Legislature to reverse the order – Edwards quietly backed down with a rescinding of the rule that took effect not long after the academic year commenced. He tried to save face by saying no vaccines had received Centers of Disease Control full authorization for use among youth, asserting that he had expected it would in time for school starting, this claiming without that in hand he had to pull back.
Subsequently, Democrat Pres. Joe Biden kicked out a prop to Edwards’ previous assertion by declaring the pandemic over, then the CDC undercut him, and Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry rounded up a number of other state chief legal officers to tell the world. Last week, a CDC advisory panel recommended that states make the vaccine part of their required schedules for children. Typically, states draw heavily upon the recommendation list in formulating their immunization schedules – although in this instance, 21 states won’t as they have prohibited that shot as a school attendance requirement.
Landry’s letter succinctly and accurately points out why the CDC should reject the request, noting the jab isn’t a true vaccine, reiterating the experimental status of mRNA as a virus-fighting method with no real knowledge of its long-term impact, and citing the negligible impact the virus has on children versus known and potential medical and psychological costs to them and their families. Indeed, they argue its presence on states’ list might taint other far more valuable and defensible inclusions that could trigger meaningful and negatively impactful anti-vaccination attitudes.
This puts Edwards in a political bind. On then off with the virus vaccine inclusion, and citing off because of CDC action, now the CDC is poised to say use authorization status doesn’t matter and it should be on again in Louisiana. If he really meant his following of CDC guidance formed his decisions on this issue, then to be consistent he would want to reimpose the original order. If he doesn’t, it exposes he didn’t mean it and that politics, bowing to the inability to provide a compelling argument in favor of his preference and to public skepticism, dictated his flip-flop.
Covidiots in the media and elsewhere, misstating and distorting, if not refusing to address honestly Landry’s argument, no doubt will try to provide Edwards cover to change course yet again. But as the politics haven’t changed, neither will he. Parents may breathe a sigh of relief.
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