The vaccine question and the GOP

This isn’t an argument about the government forcing us to vaccinate. It’s an argument about doctors and parents knowing what’s right and what saves lives. It’s an argument that civilized people with an instinct for societal self-preservation do that keep kids from dying of preventable diseases. They not only vaccinate their children for their own sake, but to provide herd immunity. To make a long concept short, when vaccination is very widespread, there are even more positive benefits in stopping the transmission of diseases. Once you get clusters of non-vaccinated kids, even vaccinated kids are at greater risk.

You can’t give crazy people even the slightest wiggle room on this topic, because because they’ll always exploit any opening to pursue their hysterical New Age fear of vaccines. Rand Paul and Chris Christie gave them exactly that. The antivax belief system is an offshoot of the organic-everything movement that is a nearly exclusive province of the left, with their charlatans and mysticism-based medical beliefs.

Now, we also own it. Two leading lights of the GOP have rolled us in the crazy mud with antivax lunatics. It’s a path that leads to dead kids, iron lungs, and a return to avoidable horrors. The Democrats were smart and aggressive on this story today, and are doing everything they can to turn the antivax movement into a GOP problem. Christie and Paul wrong on the science and on the politics.