Kentucky Vaccine Bills

*Note skip to the bottom if you just want to know what the bills are.

Multiple vaccines to fight COVID-19 should be available in 2021, in fact there are reports that some will be able to receive a vaccine this month, most likely those in the health industry. Now the debate will rage as to whether to vaccinate or not vaccinate. Some view vaccination as a necessity to protect society from a virus, especially in the case of COVID because of how new it is to humans. While others view vaccination as its own health concern. Virus are actually something new to humanity, as far as our understanding or lack thereof is concerned, as we have only had science regarding it for the past 100 years or so. What we are learning this year is our knowledge of viruses may be lacking more than we thought.

KLR is dedicated to individuals being able to exercise liberty without infringing upon others. With vaccination that argument can become a bit tricky, especially in a pandemic. Many will argue that the public good should outweigh the rights of the individual. Many will say that refusing a vaccine is a violation of others rights not to get sick by you. However, it is never that simple.

The reason vaccination is so important is herd immunity and there are two ways to achieve herd immunity. One ways is naturally through exposure, the other is artificially though vaccination. A lot of experts believe our society could have achieved herd immunity by now if lockdowns had not have happened. Yes many would have to have been exposed to the virus but as we have seen for the most part the young (under 55) and healthy experience mild to no symptoms at all, but it could take up to 2 weeks for someone to know they have it, and thus spreading of it could happen quite quickly. So the elderly (85+ experience higher rate of infection and mortality) and those with health conditions we should have practiced caution with, but not forced the rest of society into lockdown. A lot of experts also think that the only way to achieve herd immunity is to have vaccination and that the lockdowns were necessary until that was readily available, which was a gamble as well because we may have never created a vaccine for this virus, as we still don't have vaccines for some viruses. If we didn't develop a vaccine, would we stay in lockdown forever or eventually have to try natural exposure? The other difference between natural herd immunity and artificial herd immunity is at what percentage is if effective. Effective natural herd immunity is believed to be around 50%, whereas an effective artificial herd immunity is believe to be around 70%-90%. The primary difference is natural immunity involves exposure to a live virus, where as artificial immunity in most cases with a vaccine involve exposure to the dead virus.

Now that we are probably past the point of relying on natural herd immunity, we will focus on vaccination. Many will probably take the vaccination no questions asked, especially with the fear surrounding COVID-19. However, there is a segment of our society that have concerns and we will flesh those concerns out here.

Concern #1 Most medical tests for vaccination is not as stringent other medical treatments.

Concern #2 Those regulations were eased for the development of COVID-19 vaccines.

Concern #3 Side effects - The Vaccine Industry is the only industry that has the Federal Government covers the legal liabilities for the companies relating to the vaccine. Payouts by the Federal Government has so far totaled 4.4 Billion.

Concern #4 Harmful Ingredients, some of which include mercury and aluminum.

Concern #5 Moral Concerns, as fetal matter is used in vaccination, of which we believe at least 1 of the vaccines created thus far may have used fetal matter. Many Christians are morally opposed to using fetal matter to treat them medically as it involved the taking of a life. While it is not human, apparently 500,000 Sharks may have had to of been harvested for this vaccine for their squalene. Even if they are not used in the vaccines we get, the science and industry still made use of the sharks. Many environmentalist and animal rights activists would be against this, and we would say many Christians would say this is not being good stewards as that is devastating to harvest a creature on such a massive scale to cure us with a survival rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 99.5%

With all these concerns many people may opt not to take the vaccine. But remember that many will argue that it must be mandatory because their opting out could cause others to get sick. However, that argument doesn't really hold muster as there is no way you can scientifically tell the when, where, why, who and how someone got sick. So someone opting out to have a medical product forced upon their body does not violate another's non existent right to not get sick. The next argument is that the public good outweighs the individual's rights, but in our society that argument is antithetical to everything thing this Nation is founded on, and if allowed to persist would set up precedent that the government and society can violate your rights for what they want and what they think is right at the time. Finally right now we have a flu vaccine people get every year, and if they can guess the right strain the vaccine may work about 50% of the time, and still we don't have everyone catching the flu every season, not even all the elderly people (who usually take it anyway). Remember only 70% may need to take the vaccine for it to be considered effective, so we don't need to scientifically force 100% compliance. Further if the vaccine works, then if you take it you should be fine and should not have to worry about the small percentage of people that don't take it. While we here at KLR are not scientist, we would like to just pose the question, how do other species survive without vaccination? Sure we vaccinate our domesticated animals, but that is a luxury they have being domesticated.

The bottom line is forced vaccination is not needed and would be a violation of individual rights. Kentucky currently has medical and religious exemptions, but we do not have a philosophical exemption which many may have recently developed now that we as a society are looking closer at the issue of vaccination.

So what are the pre-filed bills so far regarding immunization

BR 301 - Sponsor Representative Savannah Maddox - Prohibits the government from mandating vaccines

BR 418 - Sponsor Senator Rick Girlder - Prohibits Government and Employers from mandating vaccines.

BR 892 - Sponsor Representative Mark Hart - Prohibits Public and Private Universities from mandating vaccines.

#COVID #COVIDVaccine #Immunization #HealthFreedom #HealthRights #GeneralAssembly2021 #HerdImmunity #Science #PublicHealth