President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) J. Sonnenberg

(R) Ted Harvey

20%↑

15%↑

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

(R) Doug Bruce

20%

20%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

 

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

40%↑

20%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
September 18, 2015 11:39 AM UTC

Will Woods and Neville attaboy fellow anti-vaxxer Trump?

  • 7 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(A good question – Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Donald Trump.
Donald Trump.

The Denver Post made a good point today about Donald Trump’s idiocy on vaccines:

It may have gotten lost in the welter of headline-grabbing moments in Wednesday’s Republican debate, but Donald Trump managed to add to his list of idiotic claims.

It seems he suspects vaccines cause autism and at the very least ought to be spaced out over a longer time period. As it is, he claims, the syringe of vaccine is so big that it “looks just like it is meant for a horse, not for a child.”

The idea that vaccines cause autism has been thoroughly debunked, but why should Trump care when his rhetoric on everything is so sloppy?

The serious question for us here in Colorado is, will some of our important local politicians attaboy Trump?

You’ve got, for example, Sen. Tim Neville, who’s considering a U.S. Senate run, and Sen. Laura Woods, a top target of Democrats. Both have sponsored legislation affirming that parents can opt their children out of getting recommended vaccinations.

Are Woods and Neville worried that kids might get autism from vaccines? Maybe, for them and Donald Trump, the threat of autism outweighs the risk posed by the fact that Colorado ranks last in the U.S. for measles vaccinations among kindergartners?

Donald Trump’s media magnetism, along with his real popularity and out-there beliefs, continues to offer an opportunity for us to educate ourselves about what our local politicians think. Trump makes talking about vaccines and autism fun, especially because he’s not in power. Let’s air out his ideas here in Colorado.

Comments

7 thoughts on “Will Woods and Neville attaboy fellow anti-vaxxer Trump?

  1. So 'da Donald, Timmy and Laura get to put their unimmunized disease reservoir typhoid Marys in the same room as my immunocompromised child because….

    FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!

    1. Hey, if those kids and their parents were always packing heat everywhere they go, just like Neville/Woods/RMGOpers desire, they'd be able to protect themselves from anything — ANY thing — measley (sic) childhood diseases included!!!

  2. Trump is crazy, but there's a lot of idiocy on both sides of the vaccine debate. First of all, CDC guidelines allow for boosters of the MMR, DTaP and polio to be given anytime between ages 4 and 6. There's nothing in the science that suggests there's a problem with say, waiting until age 5 to administer them, or doing polio at age 4, the MMR at age 5, and DTaP before a child's 6th birthday because that's completely fine by CDC guidelines. Note that in this scenario, the child is considered fully-vaccinated at all times under CDC guidelines, but the state would claim they "weren't vaccinated" because they hadn't gotten one of those boosters before starting kindergarten. Clearly, the child is vaccinated and according to the schedule, but it's the schedule set by the scientists at the CDC and not some lawmakers who decided it's convenient to make it a school requirement. 

    This is why I like the personal exemption because that's exactly how we vaccinated my older child. (Note again that she was fully vaccinated at all times, so the idea that "delaying" it caused a problem is nonsensical unless you know something that the CDC and my pediatrician do not.)

    The other big problem is that we don't actually have accurate data on who is and isn't vaccinated. Today, my kindergartner came home with a form claiming that she's missing most of her booster shots. This was news to me, because she had received those boosters when she went for her 5-year-old physical, and I'd requested the updated vaccine form and taken it to the school so they had the updated form as well. I'm not sure if it's lost (or filed with my older child's?), but it's very clear that the schools don't always have the updated records for whatever reason. Part of the problem is the process: I have to request a form from the doctor, wait until they sign it and call me to pick it up, and then take it over to the school and hand it to them. Isn't this 2015? Why oh why oh why aren't these files electronic? Why can't I authorize the school district to access my child's electronic vaccine files–which would be immediately updated when my child received a vaccine? Why can't I email my doctor's office and request that they send the vaccine files electronically? Why do we have a Colorado Immunization Registry that isn't connected to school districts? Instead, we're relying on parents to remember to request a form, return to the doctor's office during normal business hours to pick up the form, then take the form and drop it off at the school where they (hopefully) manage to put it in the child's folder. And now, despite having taken care of everything on my end, the fact that the school apparently lost the form makes it look like we're horrible non-vaxing parents despite the fact that she is vaccinated and I turned in the updated forms. And there will be hand-wringing about how I'm an ignorant parent putting my child's life at risk…oh, the drama!

    I'd be wiling to bet a hefty sum of money that if we found a way to streamline the vaccine record to school process, we'd discover that Colorado's vaccination rates are a lot better. And if we spent more time looking at how many first graders were vaccinated, I suspect those numbers would also increase.

    Most importantly, it's time to step up vaccination campaigns with our adults. Adults are more likely to transmit whooping cough to an infant than a child is. That's because that vaccine needs to be repeated more frequently, but I wonder if anyone here was asked about that the last time they went to the doctor? Chances are good that they asked you about a flu shot, but not about a pertussis or tetanus booster, and very likely not about Hepatitis B (or A).

    If we want good herd immunity, we also need to focus on adults whose immunity to pertussis has faded, and we need to vaccinate everyone for hepatitis rather than focusing all our efforts on newborns as if they're the population most likely to transmit hepatitis B. That remains one of the strangest experiences of having a newborn. She'd just come off oxygen and an IV after a week in the NICU, and the nurses wanted to know if I wanted to vaccinate her for hepatitis B. I sat there thinking, "um, maybe it would be good if she hit 5 pounds first?" And yes, then I "delayed" the shot because there was no science to indicate that she was at risk if we waited until she was 2 months old (or even, gasp, 6 months old). The thought seems to be that vaccines should be done asap because they're afraid we won't come back, but I think it's clear to everyone that we don't need to vaccinate days-old newborns for Hep B unless their parents or immediate caregivers are infected. Insisting that there's no room for flexibility on those kinds of vaccines (Hep A, Hep B, rotovirus are all great examples) sounds paranoid and extremist.

    1. Sorry you had such difficulties and it's been a long time since I had to deal with vaccinations but I never had any of the problems with schools keeping track of records that you describe and neither did any of my friends. Got the kid vaccinated on schedule, got the forms in and that was it. I'd be very surprised if the degree of difficulty you describe is typical.

      You raise some points worth noting about your personal experience but none of it is really relevant to the nonsense being put out there by Trump, Carson and Paul who were speaking specifically in terms of the relation between autism and vaccinations. There isn't one.

      That's now very well studied and documented. The only relation is that the age for certain vaccinations happens to also be the age at which signs of autism are first noticed but decades worth of studies show it's not a causal relation. The only studies that claimed a causal relationship were completely discredited long ago. 

      So Republican candidates contending either that there is a causal relation or that there is less risk of vaccinations causing autism if the timing is changed are talking nonsense and contributing to a lot of people resisting vaccination entirely. 

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

79 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!