The headline was that Kansas legislators overturned Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a new Congressional District voting map.
But the real news was that to get enough votes, Senate Republicans agreed to appease the anti-vax whims of Sen. Mark Steffen of Hutchinson.
It was a classic quid pro quo. I’ll vote for your measure if you advance mine.
The outcome is dangerous on two fronts.
First, if Steffen’s pet legislation, Senate Bill 381, becomes law, it would allow parents to excuse their children from getting routine vaccinations now mandated by public schools and childcare facilities.
The scheduled shots, about a dozen in all, prevent measles, mumps, diphtheria, tuberculosis, polio, etc.
Let’s take the first — measles.
Measles is so contagious that you can catch it simply by being in a room where an infected person once was. The viral particles spread when the infected person coughs or sneezes — typically symptoms — and can remain active for up to two hours. The virus is so transmittable that out of every 10 people passing through the room, nine will get infected.
Until the vaccine became available in 1963, several million Americans contracted measles each year. Children aged 5 and younger, especially, are prone to complications from measles, including encephalitis, swelling of the brain, and pneumonia.
About 20 percent of those who contract measles require hospitalization, and of course some don’t survive.
The first of two doses of the measles vaccine should be administered between 12 and 15 months; the second between 4 and 6 years. The vaccines are almost 100 percent effective and are typically included with those for mumps, rubella and chickenpox.
I CAN’T FATHOM why a supposed leader of our state would say such life-saving vaccines are bogus. Have all the medical breakthroughs of the last 50 years been for naught?
The only thing worse is that others aren’t pushing back.
Sen. Steffen is one person. That the other 28 Republicans in the Senate allowed his anti-vaccine nonsense to proceed is nothing short of criminal.
STEFFEN’S renegade tactics don’t stop there.
