August 8, 2024 9:00 am
Trump has said repeatedly that he will defund schools that mandate vaccines. Every state requires vaccinations before enrolling students. I may be mistaken but I think every state requires children to be vaccinated for a long list of diseases. So, he is threatening to defund every public school in the nation.
Dr. Paul Offit, a specialist in infectious diseases, explains what a dangerous idea this is. Vaccines work. Vaccines save lives. Trump is pandering to the anti-vaccine people. They are wrong and so is he. Children will die if Trump gets elected and follows through on this vile promise.
Dr. Offit writes:
At a campaign rally on June 22, 2024, former president Donald Trump told a crowd of cheering fans, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.” Given that every public school in the United States has vaccine mandates, this would mean eliminating all federal funding for public schools. Will Trump’s statement pressure schools to eliminate mandates? More to the point, why are school vaccine mandates important?
The best way to understand school vaccine mandates is through the lens of measles virus, the most contagious vaccine-preventable disease. Measles vaccine first became available in 1963. At that time, every year in the United States, 3-4 million people would be infected with measles, 48,000 would be hospitalized, and 500 would die. Deaths were primarily caused by pneumonia, severe dehydration, and encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). By the late 1960s, measles vaccination led to a 95 percent drop in the incidence of the disease. By the early 1970s, however, immunization rates had become stagnant. Measles cases increased. In 1971, about 150,000 cases were reported. Although the number of states requiring vaccines for school entry increased from 25 in 1968 to 40 in 1974, health officials hadn’t enforced them.
By 1981, all 50 states had school immunization requirements. By 2000, because school mandates were enforced, measles was eliminated from the United States. However, 45 of 50 states now allow philosophical or religious exemptions to vaccination. Because a critical percentage of parents have now chosen these exemptions, measles is coming back. At the end of December 2022, schools and daycare centers in Columbus, Ohio, reported 85 cases of measles; 32 children were hospitalized; all were unvaccinated. During the past four years, 338 cases of measles have been reported. This year, 188 cases of measles were reported in the United States, triple the number of cases seen in 2023. If Donald Trump were to pressure schools to eliminate mandates, hundreds of cases of measles will become thousands of cases. The case-fatality rate for measles is about 1 in 1,000. If return to a time when measles infects thousands of people, children will once again die from a disease that is entirely preventable.
The notion that Donald Trump would withhold federal funding for schools is highly unlikely. But there is another way that Trump could weaken vaccine rates—eliminate the Vaccines for Children Program (VFC), which launched in 1994 and provides vaccines for all children who are uninsured or underinsured. The program is estimated to prevent about 30 million hospitalizations a year. Were the Trump Administration to eliminate the VFC, we could expect to retreat to a time, not that long ago, where every year polio paralyzed as many as 30,000 children and killed 1,500, rubella (German measles) caused 20,000 cases of birth defects, diphtheria was the most common killer of teenagers, and bacteria like Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) caused 25,000 cases of meningitis and bloodstream infections.
Although Donald Trump may have found an applause line at his campaign rallies, if his disdain for vaccine mandates translates into public policy, children who needlessly suffer preventable illnesses won’t be applauding.
Posted by dianeravitch
Categories: Elections, Extremism, Funding, Health, Science, Stupid, Trump
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I don’t think it’s just public schools that would be effected, because at least in my location, every private child care center where I’ve worked, which both the city and state require they be licensed, has also been mandated that students demonstrate they have obtained a long list of vaccines. I highly doubt tRump knows about this.
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By ECE Professional on August 8, 2024 at 9:46 am
Also, in my experience, the only reason parents can get their kids exempt from vaccinations around here is by claiming religious grounds.
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By ECE Professional on August 8, 2024 at 9:56 am
And a stupid reason that is.
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By Duane E Swacker on August 8, 2024 at 10:04 am
“Stupid is as stupid does!” F. Gump In the CONVICTED FELON’S case “stupid is forever.”
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By Duane E Swacker on August 8, 2024 at 10:03 am
Another toothless Trump threat. How much federal funding do schools get anyway? In my state it is paltry. I think school districts out to tell Trump to stuff it, they will continue to support all of their state’s laws that support the health and welfare of their student charges, and Trump can suck eggs if he doesn’t like it.
Next thing we know Trump will threaten to “take his ball and go home.” I wish he would.
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By Steve Ruis on August 8, 2024 at 10:31 am
Funding may be small state-wide, but Title I funds are CRUCIAL for Title I schools. This would devastate those poorer schools.
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By Threatened Out West on August 8, 2024 at 11:04 am
Very important point! That also applies to PreK programs for low income kids that are situated in private facilities, like at community centers (that are not owned or managed by the government) where I’ve worked and which received Title I funding.
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By ECE Professional on August 8, 2024 at 11:33 am
We had Head Start and State PreK programs at those private facilities which served low income children and English Language learners that received public funding. I also worked in an Early Intervention program for low income 0-3 year olds who were developmentally delayed or disabled that was situated in a Catholic Charities building that received public funds. And in all of those programs, the kids had to be vaccinated.
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By ECE Professional on August 8, 2024 at 12:31 pm
All politicians are beholden to donors. Trump is so unprincipled he is totally for sale. The right wing Christians and anti-vaxxers are his big supporters. He would risk a public health emergency in order to satisfy his donors. Trump is actually more transparent than some politicians. He recently said he has to support electric vehicles because Musk gave him so much money, and simultaneously he supports, “Drill, baby, drill.”
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By retired teacher on August 8, 2024 at 10:46 am
I have also been terrified of that statement by Trump. We had several cases of pertussis run through our school several years ago. A couple of students and a teacher all got very sick. Not having vaccine mandates is scary.
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By Threatened Out West on August 8, 2024 at 11:02 am
In Jacobson v Massachusetts (1905) the Supreme Court confirmed the state’s police power to require small pox vaccinations … whether current court would affirm the 1905 decision is unknowable… no prior decision is safe, the concept of Stare Decisis, respecting prior decisions has been scrapped by the current court
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By Peter Goodman on August 8, 2024 at 11:21 am
This further reveals how Donal Trump puts personal issues before the needs of the American Public. He psychological has to defend himself and his stupid decisions during the Pandemic years, where he came out politically against vaccines. To enable vaccines now would be admitting his prior opposition was wrong, and admitting he was wrong is not something Trump does. Thus, once again, Mr. Trump is putting his own needs ahead of the American People which is precisely why he is totally inappropriate to be President.
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By William Hartl on August 8, 2024 at 11:21 am
The irony of his anti-vax stand is that he ordered Operation Warp Speed, to produce the vaccine as fast as possible. He should be taking credit.
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By dianeravitch on August 8, 2024 at 11:27 am
Not to mention that the now CONVICTED FELON and his wife got vaccinated while he was president.
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By Duane E Swacker on August 8, 2024 at 2:32 pm
and bragged about Operation Warp Speed, as if he had personally done the work.
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By Threatened Out West on August 8, 2024 at 4:49 pm
Which was funny, because if he’d been paying attention to his real constituency he’d know he was consorting with the enemy (sane people who wanted to live) by promoting development of a vaccine. Hence, he wound up both praising the experts (but MAGA don’t need no experts! ) and assuring his droids that no, really, pay no attention to those pointy-headed, sissified scientists. REAL men spurned highfalutin’ solutions like vaccines. REAL men bit down and waited the pandemic out or died trying. And if they died, they died like MEN. Oh, and a lot of women died like MEN too.
Better to die like a MAN than live by taking sissy medicine cooked up by pantywaists from the Coasts.
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By jsrtheta on August 8, 2024 at 6:23 pm
I do not know how vaccinations work in Tennessee schools. I know I had many antivax people in class. Most were religious families, but the ones I knew of were not refusing vaccinations on religious grounds, but were instead arriving at their position with science reading based on unscientific sources. They might use religion when it got them what they wanted, and they might truly have religious convictions, but the actual thought process was more related to what “scientists” they read and trusted.
This points to a peculiar vulnerability some Christians have. I know many of these people personally, and love them dearly, nonwithstanding the difference I have with their way of thought. This is the thought pattern that makes the priest align with the despot (sorry TJ). One particular friend illustrates this tendency. If she needs a doctor, she looks for one that is overtly Christian. Want to invest money? Gotta be a financial advisor who is obviously Christian. Counsel for her children? She is sure to tell you that her choice was a Christian. News must come from a Christian broadcasting company that plays contemporary Christian music.
The problem is that many of these people who claim Christianity and some other authority are not really authentic people. Some may claim medical understanding, but they really only use the Christian label to mask their lack of professional prowess. So many people are duped with this labeling. The result is that a large population in the country can be duped in matters that relate to authority. This is where we get the current acceptance of Trump and others around him.
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By Roy Turrentine on August 8, 2024 at 11:31 am
Roy, please tell your friend that Jesus was a Jew.
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By dianeravitch on August 8, 2024 at 12:31 pm
Not sure what you mean. Most fundamentalists I know are very friendly to Judaism, finding all manner of Levitican regulations in Old Testament context they can apply to their enemies do they don’t have to love them.
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By Roy Turrentine on August 8, 2024 at 1:57 pm
“The result is that a large population in the country can be duped in matters that relate to authority.”
That large population (about 80%) have one thing in common. . . . They have been brought up in/indoctrinated from birth in faith belief systems, mainly of Abrahamic origin, wherein one has to accept on faith (the first authority in their life) absurdities (need I list any of them?), myths and nonsense. They are taught to respect absurd authority.
Why wouldn’t you be “duped in matters that relate to authority” when you have been so brainwashed from birth?
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By Duane E Swacker on August 8, 2024 at 2:28 pm
I agree. There is a predisposition for those taught some of the precepts of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam to accept tyrannical authority, perhaps due to the mythology of these faiths. It is interesting, however, that similar authoritarian systems arose in history in China long before these religions, and there are other places and religious philosophies–including places where irreligion itself took hold–that support authoritarianism. Most of these places deified leadership literally, teaching the ruled population that the leader became a god.
There is one historical argument that the enlightenment arose largely because of certain religious convictions that rejected human intermediaries with God (or the gods). The writings of people like John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, and other political thinkers began their search for government by seeking what human beings naturally did, a sort of empirical look at how an assumed creator affected the creation. God was an extant creator, but man could discern in the creation the design of God. Any man could do this. Thus was created an escape hatch for those who either believe that one human being cannot attain divine status and cannot use that status for domination. This is certainly the space given to religious freedom in the freedom of conscience aspect of the First Amendment. It becomes the protection for those who choose not to believe anything that is not empirically provable to live in peace with those who despair at a world without a creator.
I am not sure what I think about that argument, but it is certainly true that the tradition of the Enlightenment in Europe is the basis for modern views of representative government. We continue to debate such ideas and create spaces within them for peace between those who disagree over matters of personal conscience.
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By Roy Turrentine on August 8, 2024 at 3:43 pm
I have no beef with matters of personal conviction. But when they are faith belief based they should be kept to oneself. It’s impossible to deny the xtian theocratic nationalists want to enforce their “personal conscience” on to everyone else.
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By Duane E Swacker on August 8, 2024 at 8:35 pm
We have science. Science does not believe in magic. Science, done properly, yields testable conclusions based on actual evidence. And its conclusions are conditional, because it recognizes that new facts may develop that dictate a reexamination of prior conclusions. It is also not afraid to say “I don’t know”.
We have tested vaccines that can cure, or otherwise ameliorate diseases and infections. Some are better than others, some are more effective than others, but all are based on science.
Giving people exemptions based on religious faith is a form of slow suicide. It’s saying yes, we know that if a person receives Vaccine A it will greatly reduce the chance of infection and, thereby, reduce danger to everyone. But we choose to risk innocent life because of the magical beliefs of some people.
This is what the Supreme Court recognized in Jacobson v. Massachusetts when it upheld a vaccination law. This should be uncontroversial today, but for the magical thinking of a sizable number of our citizens.
We either choose life, and therefore vaccination, or we decide the provably false ideas of a minority of citizens must be accommodated at the expense of innocent life.
This is absurd. But then, the very idea that Donald Trump makes a suitable president is absurd as well.
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By jsrtheta on August 8, 2024 at 12:22 pm
I still can’t understand how the Orange Felon captured what used to be an honorable political party.
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By dianeravitch on August 8, 2024 at 12:29 pm
I think you have to way back t a time that the Republican Party was “honorable”. They sure weren’t any better when they went after John Kerry.
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By jsrtheta on August 8, 2024 at 1:18 pm
Before Trump co-opted the Republican Party, the Reagan revolution decided to link the abortion issue to the party, changing the party from the party that nominally supported business to the party that supported Christianity. The Republicans wanted to become the party of fundamentalism, and it succeeded, practical business holding its nose and accepting a growing majority within its ranks of Christian Nationalists. As Reagan melted into Clinton, the Republicans began to see the party slipping away as the Reagan approach of de-regulation took over among neoliberals who accepted the religion of freedom to do business. When Obama was elected, the rise of the Tea Party moved the GOP in Trump’s direction even more, but the old boys in the Republican hierarchy still saw themselves as capable of guiding these insane compatriots. With Trump, this became impossible. His personality drove all who disagreed with him away. A couple of Liz Cheneys were around, keeping the internationalist view of the old GOP alive, but they were soon forced away in a march to the nuthouse that is the modern GOP.
I am not sure anyone needs to take my own historical perspective seriously, but there it is.
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By Roy Turrentine on August 8, 2024 at 3:57 pm
An interesting time. The Tea Party is very much the forerunner of MAGA, and the end of the old George H.W. Bush-style Republican Party.
Essentially, the Republicans became a disorderly gang driven by scientific and literary ignorance and powered by perpetual outrage. It’s been lost since then. When a party foists the likes of Trump and Vance on the body politic it has lost any pretense of seriousness and sobriety, opting instead to put the pedal to the floor and aim directly for the cliff’s edge.
Look out below.
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By jsrtheta on August 9, 2024 at 12:13 am
Diane: A poisonous stew of ignorance, un-tempered feelings, ideology, and money. CBK
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By Catherine King on August 9, 2024 at 7:12 am
I’m so glad Madame Vice President chose an illustrious, union teacher to hopefully have her ear as her vice president in the Oval Office. Too many presidential administrations have squandered a great deal of their domestic policy legacies by threatening to defund public schools and even following through on it. After the election, we can talk about threatening to defund schools for vaccination requirements and about threatening to defund schools for test scores. I tried to figure out which is worse. Arguments can be made for each.
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By leftcoastteacher87 on August 8, 2024 at 9:05 pm
This is a matter of public health. I for one have no intention of dying because some loon wants to believe in patently lunatic theories.
And when that loon is the president, the danger is far more severe.
The best test scores in history are meaningless if you’re dead.
Harris must win.
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By jsrtheta on August 8, 2024 at 9:26 pm
Actually, arguments can’t be credibly made for defunding schools that mandate vaccination.
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By jsrtheta on August 8, 2024 at 9:31 pm
On the other hand, closing and defunding schools for test scores is abhorrent because the testing, not the vaccination, is the mandate. Just saying that the punitive defunding of schools is always wrong. Didn’t mean to equivocate with anti-vaxxer ridiculousness.
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By leftcoastteacher87 on August 8, 2024 at 9:44 pm
That’s cool. I got your point, of course.
My point was only that one of them could be fatal, while the other, loathsome as it is, can be less drastic in its outcome.
Didn’t mean to be melodramatic.
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By jsrtheta on August 8, 2024 at 11:03 pm
All good and much love.
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By leftcoastteacher87 on August 9, 2024 at 12:09 am
Back at ya.
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By jsrtheta on August 9, 2024 at 12:15 am