Anti-vaccine mandate bill pushed by KY Republican using disproven COVID-19 claims

A bill to prohibit any school or workplace from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations advanced through the Senate Tuesday with divided support from Republicans.

Under Senate Bill 295 from Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, no children or adults could be required to get a COVID-19 vaccine in order to attend school, get a job, acquire a professional license, or receive any health care procedure.

In bolstering her bill, the Smithfield Republican relied on misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccinations.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization say vaccinations are a safe and effective way to prevent disease. Most side effects, like redness and soreness at the injection site, are mild, and serious adverse reactions are rare.

Though first distributed with the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization status, the actual technology behind the mRNA vaccines, which Tichenor references in her bill, is decades old.

Messenger RNA was first discovered in the 1960s. Made up of genetic material that tells a body how to make protein, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine does not contain any virus, itself, but triggers a body’s natural response to fight it.

Tichenor, who has long been vocal about her suspicion of the COVID-19 vaccine, said her bill is necessary to protect the health and individual liberties of Kentuckians and to ensure they can “make informed decisions about protecting themselves from viruses that may or may not put them at risk.”

Tichenor said in a statement after the Senate voted 25-11 to advance the bill, “We are still seeing these requirements from schools, employers and medical facilities, even though these vaccinations are not safe. We now have access to a mountain of evidence-based data showing these vaccines are ineffective and dangerous.”

The “mountain” of data Tichenor is referring to are the personal stories filed into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.

While operational before the COVID-19 pandemic, the VAERS system, which is public and searchable, became a spoke in the wheel of conspiracies spinning around the pandemic at its height.

The VAERS database has hundreds of thousands of anecdotal reports documenting possible “adverse events” caused by vaccines. These reports can be entered by anyone, like a medical Wikipedia. Those claims are then evaluated by VAERS staff to determine if intervention is needed.

During the height of the pandemic, VAERS became a breeding ground for anti-vaccine groups and conspiracy theorists spreading falsehoods about the vaccine’s dangerous side effects.

The WHO estimated that COVID-19 vaccinations saved more than 14 million people worldwide in 2021 during the global pandemic.

Still, Tichenor cited VAERS data from the Senate floor on Tuesday.

“The number of adverse events and deaths attributed to this vaccine are through the roof. We don’t have the count,” she said. “If we go off the VAERS database, it’s tens of thousands of people in the United States that have died from this vaccine.”

There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccination has caused “tens of thousands of deaths.” In fact, studies have shown the rate of death is lower for people who have received the vaccine than for those who did not.

Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, a radiologist, pointed out that the VAERS system is an “open database that anybody who wants to can put anything in.” She then urged listeners, “Don’t believe everything you read.

“Learn how to look at data. Go to the primary sources. Understand the motivation behind who is trying to manipulate you.”

Sen. David Yates, a fellow Louisville Democrat, said Republicans want it both ways: Local control and government overreach.

“What you’re telling these small business owners is that big government is going to make sure they cannot make mandates about what’s going on in their local business,” Yates said. “We’re coming in saying, you don’t have a choice. How far do we go?”

Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Fruit Hill, was one of the Republicans to vote against the bill.

“This body routinely defends private sector businesses and the decisions they make and the liberty to make those decisions,” he said, before warning his fellow members to be “very careful about bills that give life to conspiracy.”

‘Cheating the children of Kentucky’

On Friday, several senators, including Tichenor, also spoke against vaccinations during floor debate on another bill, House Bill 274.

That bill allows pharmacists to give vaccinations to children as young as 5; the law currently sets the minimum age at 9. The bill passed unanimously in the House, but the Senate saw 11 votes against it, including four members who flipped from their initial yes votes after anti-vaccination comments from some of their peers.

Sen. Stephen Meredith, R-Leitchfield, said Kentucky is facing a “public health crisis in regard to childhood vaccination,” and that fewer Kentucky kids are vaccinated for things like measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis and tetanus than in most surrounding states.

Meredith also said 51 of 120 Kentucky counties do not have a general pediatrician. But, he said, pharmacists are more widely accessible in rural Kentucky.

Tichenor said pharmacists may not know a child’s medical history before giving a vaccine, and the bill is “a little bit reckless.”

Sen. Shelley Funke Frommeyer, R-Alexandria, said Kentucky needs a “wellness revolution,” but asked, “Does it start by an injection into your body?”

Funke Frommeyer said the number of children with disabilities and learning challenges is “staggering” and asked if it has to do with food additives and dyes. She also alleged that “pet vaccines are actually safer than our people vaccines.”

A flawed and now-debunked study from the late 1990s claimed there was a link between childhood vaccinations and autism. Numerous studies have since shown there is no causal relationship between vaccines and autism.

The man behind the initial study, Andrew Wakefield, was stripped of his medical license in the United Kingdom.

Meredith told his colleagues he was disappointed in their votes.

“You see a problem, you fix a problem,” he said. “It appears the folks going against this would rather curse the darkness than light a candle.”

He reiterated the bill was not mandating any new vaccines, merely increasing access for Kentucky’s kids.

“If you’re voting against this based on principle, you’re cheating the children of Kentucky, particularly rural Kentucky,” he said. “I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am in that.”

HB 274 was signed into law by the governor Tuesday.