Tennessee puts a stop to all vaccine outreach to minors

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Policy announced as top health official is ousted for speaking out

The Tennessee Department of Health is stopping all vaccine outreach to minors, not just for Covid-19, but for all diseases.

According to The Tennessean, the health department will put a halt to all vaccine events on school properties, and will no longer send reminders to teens about their second Covid-19 vaccine doses. If it must issue information about vaccines, the agency logo will be removed from relevant documents.

The decision to change Tennessee’s vaccination strategy comes directly from Health Commissioner Dr Lisa Piercey, said an internal Covid-19 report instructing health department staff on the new policy last Friday.

Postcards with second-dose reminders will still be sent to adults, according to the internal report, but teens will be removed from the mailing list in case they are “potentially interpreted as solicitation to minors”.

The announcement has come in the midst of a bitter row over the firing of a top Tennessee health official. Dr Michelle Fiscus, a top vaccine official, says she was ousted to appease Republican state lawmakers who want to roll back efforts to vaccinate young people against the virus.

Dr Fiscus addressed the restrictions of communications about vaccines in a wider statement about her dismissal, published by The Tennessean.

“The leadership of the Tennessee Department of Health has reacted to the sabre rattling from the Government Operations Committee by halting ALL vaccination outreach for children. Not just COVID-19 vaccine outreach for teens, but ALL communications around vaccines of any kind,” read the statement.

It continued: “No back-to-school messaging to the more than 30,000 parents who did not get their children measles vaccines last year due to the pandemic.  No messaging around human papilloma virus vaccine to the residents of the state with one of the highest HPV cancer rates in the country...THIS is a failure of public health to protect the people of Tennessee and THAT is what is “reprehensible”. When the people elected and appointed to lead this state put their political gains ahead of the public good, they have betrayed the people who have trusted them with their lives.”

Concerns about the escalating spread of Covid-19 across the state have been raised, as the average number of new cases per day has risen sharply in the last fortnight – from 177 to 418, while average test positivity rate has jumped from 2.2 per cent to 5.4 per cent over the same period.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tennessee-vaccine-minors-covid-teens-b1883601.html

 

 

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Concerned vaccine skeptics push back against disturbing fad of teenagers living

TENNESSEE — Stunned by the tidal wave of teenagers receiving accurate health information and possibly even being vaccinated against communicable diseases, legislators here have rallied to put a halt to the startling mania that has swept from high school to high school.

Youths the state over were partaking of the fad in their pediatricians’ offices, seemingly as fast as they could get to the needles. But at the urging of Republican state legislators, Tennessee’s health department has stopped all vaccine outreach to minors, not just that pertaining to the covid-19 vaccine. Concerned parties took swift action in Ohio, too, where legislators have prevented schools from following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention around vaccinations. Thank heavens someone was pushing back against this horrible new pattern, protecting young people who would otherwise succumb and be vaccinated, almost guaranteeing them a miserable 60 or 70 additional years on the planet.

“Do you know what happens to the millions of teenagers who are vaccinated against diseases like polio and HPV?” a concerned party demanded. “It’s right there in the studies: They go on to lead healthy, normal lives instead of dying excruciating early deaths. Not only that, but they protect those around them through herd immunity."

The skeptics noted with horror that if their areas’ teenagers fell to peer pressure with this vaccination trend, they might grow up to be lawyers, accordion players or even members of state legislatures. “Some of them, when they become adults, may become the kind of people who have small dogs that they refer to as their ‘fur babies.’” All this, they noted, could be prevented by just saying no to vaccination now.

Clearly, standards had declined over the past hundred years. “Contracting polio and dying was a fact of life for my grandparents’ generation,” observed one ardent opponent. “But Gen Z and the coddled kids these days somehow think they should get some sort of escape from that reality simply because medical science has improved and such deaths today would be not only unnecessary but utterly pointless?"

Vaccination, as pediatricians have long observed, can be a gateway into years of engagement with modern medical science. First, a youngster is getting vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, and then before you know it, they are dosing themselves with annual flu vaccinations and, in some cases, penicillin. “It’s a cycle,” one doctor noted. “Get them access to lifesaving medicine when they’re young, and you have someone who will keep coming back for more of it for decades.”

These skeptics worried that the administration of what kids are reportedly calling “the shot,” “the jab” or even “the Fauci ouchie” would have devastating effects on young adults in their communities, allowing them to grow up and, perhaps, pay taxes, or host gender-reveal parties that would set large swaths of forest land on fire.

“Don’t they have any idea what we’re doing to the earth?” asked another adult. “They won’t want to be alive in seven or eight decades, a terrifying fate that getting vaccinated now will make all the more likely. By then, the planet might well be ravaged by heat and scarcity!”

"I don’t want the teenagers to die decades from now because of my utter recklessness with the planet,” the adult noted. “I want them to die right away, from preventable diseases, as God intended.”

But, happily, a glimmer of hope has emerged that the tide might be turned against this craze after all: President Biden had fallen short of his July 4 vaccination goals. From Tennessee and beyond, the cheers rang out as skeptics rejoiced in the thought that because of their courageous opposition to these vaccines, thousands of people of all ages would die who otherwise might not have. There was still a chance that this dangerous fad of teenagers living might be stopped.

Alexandra Petri

Columnist

July 16, 202

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/16/concerned-vaccine-skeptics-push-back-against-disturbing-fad-teenagers-living/