When the CDC recommends that children get the Covid vaccine as part of their routine pediatric vaccination schedule, the impact of your local elected officials will loom larger than ever. Because, despite the official-sounding "CDC recommendation" from your federal government, ultimately, it is your state and local governments that will make the final call on whether these shots will be mandatory for public school attendance, not the federal government.
As we approach the November midterm elections, it's never been more clear that your choice for governor and state representative carries a lot more weight and impact than your votes for federal representative.
I've made the argument on this space for years that local elections are much more impactful on everyday Americans than presidential elections. "What happens in your house is more important than what happens in the White House" is my mantra. And this vaccine issue is the perfect example.
Just look at the state of Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis heard the news from the CDC, shrugged, and probably said, "So what?"
You see, this recommendation remains just that, a recommendation. It does not have the force of law until a jurisdiction decides to follow the recommendations and codify them into law.
In Florida, DeSantis saw this day coming (via CNN):
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed what he called “the strongest piece of legislation that’s been enacted anywhere in the country” in opposition to coronavirus vaccination mandates on workers.
Flanked by Republican legislative leaders, DeSantis officially made Florida the first state with a law that imposes fines on businesses and hospitals that require inoculation against Covid-19 without exemptions or alternatives. DeSantis signed the legislative package into law a day after Republican lawmakers passed his anti-mandate agenda during a fast-moving special session that was largely divided along party lines.
“Leadership means you get in there and you do what you can to stand by people,” DeSantis said. “And that’s exactly what we did today.”
So now the ball is in the court of your governor and state legislators.
Do you still think there's no real difference between Republicans and Democrats? Well, in some places that may be the case, but not in Arizona.
The voters of the Grand Canyon State have a pretty clear choice between Katie Hobbs, an unimpressive, mousy technocrat who will follow along with whatever Washington Democrats tell her she's supposed to do, and Kari Lake, who has already jumped out ahead of the CDC to declare its recommendation "dead on arrival."
This is my promise to Arizona.
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) October 19, 2022
This an experimental shot.
Our Children are NOT guinea pigs.
When I'm Governor, the Covid Vax will NEVER be mandatory for our precious children.
NEVER. pic.twitter.com/I6NjUwwRDU
"We will never allow that in Arizona. This is an experimental shot," Lake said during a campaign event. "Our children are not guinea pigs, and we're not going to have incidents of myocarditis in our young, precious children. We will fight that with every fiber in our being. We're not going to have this forced shot by the CDC, which has their tentacles in Big Pharma, and I'm going to fight that. This is an experimental shot, and we're seeing injuries from this vaccine, and we're not going to force our precious, healthy children to get a shot that is already proving to be not only ineffective, it's also proving to be dangerous."
This is no small issue. If a state adopts the CDC recommendation, it means children will be denied access to the education their parents have been compelled to finance with their property taxes unless they agree to get the shot.
No issue is more fundamental than the government compelling a parent to force a medical procedure on their children against the parents' wishes. Democrat governors will do just that with this highly controversial vaccine that, we now know for certain, was never designed to prevent infection or spread of the virus. It wasn't even tested for it.
Without any compelling scientific rationale for the child vaccination mandate, it seems reckless to march down this path. But good luck getting logical guidance from the highly politicized CDC, which took marching orders on childhood mask policies from the scientific geniuses at the teachers' union.
This is why elections matter… but more specifically, why local and state elections matter.
If your candidate for governor, state legislator, city county supervisor, or school board member hasn't made clear how they stand on this issue, make them.